I LIBRARY OF CONGRESS J 

tp^-'-- lopraw^o t 

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I UNITED STATES OF AMERICA., f . 



LIBRARY NOTES 



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AT P. RUSSELL. 




NEW YORK: 
PUBLISHED BY HURD AND HOUGHTON. 

1875. 






Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1875, by 

Addison P. Russell, 
In tlie Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



EIVERSIDE, CAMBKIDGE: 
PRINTED BY H. 0. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY. 



COIfTENTS. 



INSUFFICIENCY. 

In every object there is an inexhaustible meaning ; the eye sees in it 
what the eye brings means of seeing. — A remark of" Sterling on La 
Rochefoucauld's maxims. — How a man, especially, should he looked 
at. — A habit of Fnseli. — Illustrations from Richardson, Dr. John- 
son, Emerson, Burns, Landor, and Dryden. — What you think of a 
man depends upon how you look at him. — Diversity. — Illustra- 
tions from nature and literature. — Sentences from Cervantes, Em- 
erson, and Montai-^ne. — Interspaces betwixt atom and atom, differ- 
ing atoms. — Public opinion the atmosphere of society. — Lowell's 
definition of common sense. — The history of human opinions 
the history of human errors. — Observations of John Foster, Swift, 
Montaigne, Pope, Emerson, Voltaire, and Motley, — Anecdote of 
Voltaire. — Nollekens and the widow. — Christopher North to the 
Ettrick Shepherd. — Illustrations from Gilbert White, Darwin, You- 
att, Voltaire, and Digby. — Lowell's remark upon Montaigne and 
Shakespeare. — Self-knowledge. — Self-love. — Vanity. — Thoughts 
of Erasmus, Norris, Plutarch, Pascal, Sir Thomas Browne, Jeremy 
Taylor, and Thackeray. — An anecdote Cicero told of himself. — 
Southey's anecdote of the Jesuit Manuel de Vergaraand the seventh 
commandment. — Opinion of old Indian women as to the cause of 
the earthquake at Talcahuano. — Tenterden-steeple the cause of 
Goodwin Sands, related by Bishop Latimer. — Darwin's story of 
the fox on the island of San Pedro. — Voltaire's remark upon in- 
sects in the garden, illustrating our limited knowledge of the globe 
we inhabit. — Similar remark of Horace Walpole, comparing man 
to a butterfly. — Exclamation of Dr. Livingstone's African servant, 
upon his first experience of the sea. — Ignorance, and some of its 
effects. — Credulity, and one of its uses. — Exclamation of Thack- 
eray. — Remarks of Horace Walpole. — Fancy of Crabb Robinson, 
when a child, for the book of Revelation, and his reasons therefor. — 
Robert Robinson and the trinity. — Rebuke of a clergyman to a 
young man, who said he would believe nothing which he could not 
understand. — John Foster's analysis of an atheist. — Coleridge's 
account of one just flogging. — Difficulty of doing good. — A pat- 
tern within ourselves. — Conscience. — Our vices and our virtues. 



11 CONTENTS. 

— Sentences from Conversation Sharpe, Montaigne, Sterne, and 
Confucius. — Most men live blindly. — A thought from Alger. 

— God delights to isolate us every day. — A thought from Emer- 
son. — Goldsmith's illustration of the vanity and uncertainty of 
human judgment. — Every man thinks himself qualified for the 
hardest of all trades, that of government. — Remarks of Socrates 
and Washington Irving. — Difficulty of curing public evils. — Ex- 
ample fi'om Livy, by Montaigne. — Man only tries to pass for more 
than he is. — Heine's plea for the negro king. — Vain rage of the 
Fuegians. — Contests of Dr. Johnson and Curran with fish-women. 

— The more there is known, the more it is perceived there is to be 
known. — Thoughts and sayings of Goethe, Michel Angelo, Mrs. 
Siddons, Dugald Stewart, Newton, Bossuet, Voltaire, and Sir 
Thomas Browne. — Reply of old Simonides to Hiero, who was 
asked by the tyrant to tell what God is. — Words of Emerson and 
Congreve. — The curiosity of knowing things has been given to 
man for a scourge. — A remark by Lessing on the restless instinct 
for truth 17 

II. 

EXTREMES. 

In man there will be a layer of fierce hyena, or of timid deer, running 
through the nature in the most uncertain and tortuous manner. — 
Cruelty and tenderness of the Tlascalans of Mexico. — The good 
and the evil lie close together, and alternate. — Metals and rags. — 
A terrible Voltaic pile. — The claw nicely cushioned. — Illustrations. 

— Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's remark of the Duchess of Marl- 
borough. — Madame de Maintenon's remark to Madame de Montes- 
pan. — Conduct of the women at Goa. — Conduct of Pietro Delia 
Valle. — Conduct of the Chinese. — Conduct of the ladies of the court 
of Paris after the massacre of St. Bartholomew. — John Howe's 
method of conducting public fasts. — How the rector of Eittleworth 
lost his living. — Puritanism in the early history of New England. 

— Some customs of the Irish when Ireland was call-ed the Isle of 
Saints. — Prayers for revenge in North Wales. — An account of the 
death of a cock-fighting squire, by Mrs. Gaskell. — Man a strange 
mixture of generosity and meanness, of kindness and severity, even 
of dishonesty and nobleness. — A passage from Helps. — Neither 
the vices nor the virtues of man are his nature. — A passage from 
Taine. — The three sects at Rome. — A passage from Middleton's 
Cicero. — The same lecturer there publishes the rules of temperance, 
and at the same time discourses of love and wantonness. — Are- 
mark of Montaigne. — A saying of the courtesan Lais. — Pericles and 
Aspasia. — A passage from Bayle. — Good and bad men are each 
less so than they seem. — Some devil and some God in man. — An 
observation of Coleridge. — Separating good qualities from evil in 
the same person. — A remark of Boswell. — A good preacher and a 
bad liver. — Nicholls, a Yorkshire clergyman. — A Quaker's invec- 
tive. — Luther's and Calvin's violence. — Anger the sinews of the 
soul. — A remark by Luther. Opinions of Burke, Sir Gilbert El- 



CONTENTS. Ill 

Hot, and John Norris. — What was said when Charillus, King of 
Sparta, was commended. — What Erasmus said of Luther, and what 
Luther said of himself. — Nature will be buried a great time, and 
yet revive. — Montaigne and the Latin tongue. — -^sop's damsel, 
turned from a cat to a woman. — A saying of Publius Syrus. — 
Layard's story of a party of Arabs. — Legend of a Brahman trans- 
formed into a monkey. — Carlyle's Moslem narrative of Moses and 
the dwellers by the Dead Sea. — Sir Walter's story of a placid min- 
ister, near Dundee. — Dr. Johnson and baby-talk. — Frederick Will- 
iam's encounter with a Jew in Berlin. — Dr. Livingstone's account 
of the converted African chief, Sechele, and how he proposed to 
Christianize his tribe. — Conduct of missionaries in New California 
and among the Slavonic people. — Robinson's rebuke of a surly 
Scotchman. — Lord Byron's impatience at being sent for to a ball, 
when his vote was necessary to emancipate five millions of Catholics. 

— Reply of Selwyn on being accused of a want of feeling. — Heine, 
upon forgiveness of enemies. — Our measure of rewards and punish- 
ments. — A passage from Thackeray. — How Tertullian dissuaded 
the Christians from frequenting the public spectacles. — The Ma- 
hometan's heaven and the Christian's hell. — Weighing souls in a 
literal balance. — Legend of the redbreast. — Anecdote of a Cal- 
vinistic divine, who was ejected from his church in Neufchatel. — 
Story of a country clergyman in France, who had a great number 
of sheep stolen from him. — The carrancha, that feeds on scabs, and 
pursues the gallinazo till it vomits up the carrion it has recently- 
gorged. — Anecdote of Rev. William Grimshaw. — Newton's inter- 
view with the woman in prison. — Jonathan Edwards' book on 
Original Sin, and its effect upon Robinson. — Laws against witch- 
craft, and persecutions under them. — A terrible story by Froude. 

— John Wesley on witchcraft. — Cotton Mather's history intro- 
duced to the English public by Richard Baxter. — Twenty-seven 
persons executed at Salem, and Giles Corey pressed to death. — 
Lowell on witchcraft.^ — A passage from Bayle on the spirit of 
party. — Disraeli, the younger, on the limits of human reason. — 
Reason can never be popular. — A remark of Goethe. — It ;^ not 
from reason and prudence that people marry, said Dr. Johnson, 
but from inclination. A man is poor ; he thinks it cannot be 
worse, and so I '11 e'en marry Peggy. — If people, said Thackeray, 
only made prudent marriages, what a stop to population there 
would be ! 49 

III. 

DISGUISES. 

Man, poor fellow, would be a curious object for microscopic study. — 
An account by Addison, of a gentleman who determined to live and 
dress according to the rules of common sense. — Custom doth make 
dotards of us all. — A passage from Carlyle. — Very few sponta- 
neous actions. — A passage from Emerson. — Every man is conscious 
that he lives two lives. — A passage fi-om Lowell. — We keep on de- 
ceiving ourselves in regard to our faults, until we at last come to 



IV CONTENTS. 

look upon them as virtues. — Like Selwyn, we get to think even our 
vices necessities. — How Mahomet turned a calamity to his advan- 
tage. — A saying of Home Tooke. — Whipple upon dignity. — Bul- 
wer's account of a superior man. — The diynitied man Coleridge 
once saw at a dinner-table. — The Duke of Somerset a dignified 
gentleman. — The comedian's india-rubber suit expanded by air 
to represent FalstafF. — Goldsmith's description of the bowl-holders. 

— Analysis of the money-getter. — A passage from Colton. — Foote's 
illustration of the microscopic nig^ardliness of a miser. — Fine hor- 
ror of poverty described by Lamb. — A device of American boat- 
xnen. — Disraeli's philosophical sketch of Audley. — Lamb's Remi- 
niscences of Juke Judkins, Esq., of Birmingham; a study and 
analysis of meanness. — De Foe's rules to make a good English 
tradesman. — George Dyer's treatment by a knavish school-master. 

— Anecdote of Merck and the grand duke, told by Goethe to 
Eckermann. — The greatest pleasure 1 know, said Lamb, is to do a 
good action by stealth, and to have it found out by accident . 77 

IV. 

STANDARDS. 

All men think all men imperfect but themselves. — All would reform 
all but themselves.— Standards of excellence. — Perfect virtue or 
contentment. — Sentences from Sterling and Goethe. — All things 
right and wrong together. — Passages from Emerson, De Quincey, 
and Blackwood's Magazine. — The net amount ot man and man 
does not much vary. — The right and prudent does not always lead 
to good, or contrary measures to bad. — Is virtue piecemeal 1 — Do- 
ing good. — Reasoning upon man as a divinity. — Reforming the 
opinions of mankind. — Observations by Coleridge, Sydney Smith, 
Michel Angelo, and Thoreau. — Odor of goodness tainted. — I 
thought you had come to preach to me — an anecdote of President 
Lincoln. — Virtue does not take pupils. — Passages from Souvestre 
and Mencius. — Thousands hacking at the branches of evil, to one 
who is striking at the root. — A passage from Thoreau. — Right, 
too rigid, hardens into wrong. — Anecdote of a malicious philanthro- 
pist. — Story of another reformer. — Traders in philanthropy wrong 
in head or heart somewhere or other. — Passages from Hawthorne. 

— A remark of Madame de Stael to Lady Mackintosh when God- 
win was gone. — A remark of Johnson to Boswell. — Conspicuous 
instances of persons indifferent to human suffering, who were deeply 
attached to animals. — Fournier. — Couthon. — Panis. — Chau- 
mette. — Marat. — Bacon's observation upon the Turks. — Abbe 
Migne alludes to the cruelty of an old Roman, and to the violence 
of Galen's mother. — Caligula and his horse. — Hospitals for cats 
in Egypt, where human suffering scarcely elicits a care. — Sydney 
Smith's advice to the Bishop of New Zealand. — Lamb's story of an 
India-house clerk accused of eating man's flesh. — The pagan 
Radbod and Bishop Wolfran at the baptismal font. — Tomochichi 
and John Wesley. — Reply of the King of Siam to the Dutch am- 
bassador. — Tomochichi's opinion of the Christians. — Story of the 



CONTENTS. V 

"West Indian cazique. — How, according to Dr. Medhurst, the 
Cliinese regarded Christianity. — The good tribe found by Living- 
stone in Africa. — Dr. Kane's experience with the Esquimaux. — 
Coleridge's project of pantisocracy. — Southey inflamed by it, and 
what he wrote to his brother Tom. — Coleridge catching the itch 
from an admiring democratical auditor at an inn, who insisted upon 
shaking hands with him. — Southey, after a trial of his panacea, re- 
nounces his belief in the persuadability of man, and is cured of the 
mania of man-mending. — Nature goes her own way. — Observa- 
tions of Goethe. — A saying of Rousseau. — The location of St. 
Petersburg, and how its founder, Peter the Great, stood to his whim. 

— Sydney Smith's illustration of the suckling act. — Observations 
of Goethe upon nature, npon giving advice, upon democracy and 
aristocracy. — The Corn-Law Rhymer's definition of a communist. 

— Dr. Johnson upon levelers. — Margaret Fuller's observation upon 
Goethe. — A continent, persisting, immovable, just person charac- 
terized by Emerson. — Sir Isaac Newton. — Pemberton on Newton. 
— Newton to Oldenburg. — Sayings of Newton. — Bishop Atterbury 
on Newton. — Pope on Newton. — Newton and Vigani. — Newton 
and Dr. Halley. — Bishop Burnet's estimate of Newton — the 
whitest soul he ever knew. — The mills of God. — A passage from 
Motley relating to the Netherlands. — Petrified trees npon the 
Andes, at an elevation of seven thousand feet. — Darwin's descrip- 
tion and speculations. — The world cannot keep quiet. — A passage 
from Goethe. — It is with human things as it is with great icebergs. 

— A passage from Froude. — The bottom at the top again. — 
An observation by John Gait in his life of Wolsey. — Reply of the 
republican General Augereau, at the coronation of Napoleon. — 
Value, to the cause of civil liberty and Christianity, of the accidental 
epithet of beggars, applied to Brederode and his three hundred 
nobles. — Account of it by Motley. — Johnny Appleseed. — Haw- 
thorne's distinction between a philanthropic man and a philanthro- 
pist. — John Brown. — Anecdotes of him, and utterances of his, 
from boyhood, when he began to hate slavery and love the slaves, to 
the scatfold, an old man. — Give the corpse a good dose of arsenic, 
and make sure work of it ! exclaimed the Virginia captain of 
militia. — The saint, whose martyrdom will make the gallows glo- 
rious like the cross ! exclaimed the Massachusetts sage and seer. — 
Reflections by Froude on the death of John Davis, one of England's 
forgotten worthies 100 

V. 

REWARDS. 

Said Lord Southampton to the Bishop of Llandafl\, I want your 
advice, my lord ; how am I to bring up my son so as to make* him 
get forward in the world '( I know of but one way, replied the 
bishop; give him parts and poverty. — An anecdote of Poussin 
to the same effect. — Observations upon riches, by Emerson and 
Froude. — Effects of slavery in Greece and Rome. — Commerce and 
manufactures believed to defile those who engaged in them. — 



vi CONTENTS. 

Views of Plato, Aristotle, Xenophon, and Cicero. — Conduct of 
Augustus. — Labor and idleness. — Sayings of Tom Brown and 
Burke. — A passage from Saadi. — How President Lincoln earned 
his first dollar. — Only such persons interest us who have stood in 
the jaws of need. — Burns. ^ — Anecdotes of Astley and Henderson. 

— Cost of excellence. — Allusions to Addison, Lamb, Tennyson, 
Dickens, Balzac, Wordsworth, BufFon, Goldsmith, La Rochefou- 
cauld, Sheridan, Foster, and Rogers. — Cervantes. — Le Sage. — 
Camoens. — Vondel. — Tasso. — Corneille. — Racine's reply to 
Louis XIV, — Spenser. — Sydenham. — Goldsmith to Bob Bryan- 
ton. — Cervantes and Don Quixote. — Bunyan and Pilgrim's 
Progress. — Harrington and Oceana. — L'Estrange, Ben Jonson, 
John Selden, Jeremy Taylor, and Edmund Waller imprisoned. — 
Sir Walter Raleigh and his History of the World. — George Wither 
and his Shepherd's Hunting. — Elegant to have few wants, and to 
serve them one's self. — Passages from Emerson, Confucius, 
Thoreau, Bishop Berkeley, and Goethe. — Rogers and Wordsworth. 

— Thomson and Burns. — Laconic correspondence between Eoote 
and his mother. — Anecdotes of Isaac Disraeli, Coleridge, and 
Professor Agassiz. — Sir John Hawkins and Goldsmith. — Cum- 
berland's remarks upon Johnson. — Anecdote of Johnson. — Ob- 
servations of Goethe and Margaret Fuller. — Contemporary esti- 
mates of Homer, Sophocles, Socrates, Cicero, Athenseus, Plato, 
Aristotle, Democritus, Virgil, Seneca, Scott, Wordsworth, Southey, 
Hogg, and Wilson. — Goldsmith's criticisms of Waller's Ode on the 
Death of Cromwell, Rape of the Lock, and Allegro and Penseroso. 

— Gray's opinion of the Castle of Indolence and the writings of 
Akenside. — Wal])ole's opinion of the Divina Commedia. — Long- 
continued contempt for Bunyan and De Foe. — Byron's opinion 
of the works of Rogers, Moore, and Wordsworth. — Mackenzie ad- 
vised Burns to take for his model in song-writing Mrs. John Hun- 
ter. — De Quincey upon Goethe. — Dr. Johnson's opinion of Mil- 
ton's Sonnets. — His criticisms of Swift and Sterne. — Walpole's 
opinion of Chaucer, Montaigne, and Boswell's Johnson. — Cole- 
ridge's opinion of Faust, and Southey's of The Ancient Mariner. — 
Waller's and Curran's estimates of Paradise Lost. — The failure 
of Waverley predicted. — Goethe adjured not to take so unpromis- 
ing a subject as Faust. — Hume tried to dissuade Robertson from 
writing the History of Charles V. — Montesquieu advised not to 
publish The Spirit of Laws. — Schiller and Wordsworth implored 
not to publish certain poems, which turned out to be the most pop- 
ular. — Gait's Annals of the Parish rejected because a Scottish 
novel would never take with the public. — Paul and Virginia pro- 
nounced a failure by the friends of St. Pierre. — Lamb's estimate of 
Manning. — Observations by Dr. Johnson and Sir Thomas Browne. 

— Robinson's and Rogers' impressions of Sydney Smith. — Landor 
and Coleridge upon Shakespeare. — Goethe upon Voltaire. — Heine 
upon Goethe. — Hawthorne upon Burns. — Landor upon Cromwell 
and Milton. — Coleridge upon Shakespeare and Milton. — Goethe 
upon Shakespeare. — Coleridge upon Shakespeare, in comparison 
with Homer. — Natural to man to regard himself as the supreme 
object of the creation. — Passages from Goethe. — He (man) exag- 



CONTENTS. Vll 

gerates the importance of his own personality. — Lowell upon Vic- 
tor Hugo and Petrarch. — Lamartine grows sick of himself. — Ma- 
caulay upon the writings of Byron, Petrarch, and Pousseau. — 
Byron's morbid love of a bad reputation. — His impression that he 
was the offspring of a demon. — A passage from Coleridge. — Pas- 
sion without any appetite is fiendish. — Case of continued barking 
of a dog, mentioned by Crabb Robinson, irritated by the echo of his 
own voice. In human life this is perpetually occurring. A dog 
has been known to contract an illness by the continued labor of 
barking at his own echo, and finally to be killed by it ... 136 

VI. 



Minds, like some seed-plants, delight in sporting; there is great 
variety in thinking, but the few great ideas remain the same. — 
"Writers who can be termed thinking authors would not form a very 
copious library. — A passage from Melmoth. — A sentence from 
Publius Syrus. — A saying of Pinto. — Proverbs and maxims. 

— Every possible maxim of conduct existing in the world. — Ob- 
servations by Pascal and Sir Thomas Browne. — Definition of a 
proverb. — Proverbs common to all nations. — A passage from the 
elder Disraeli. — Effect of expunging from literature every text 
and phrase quoted from the Bible. — A passage from The Eclipse 
of Faith. — The writings of Homer the common inheritance of 
civilized man. — A passage from The London Quarterly. — The 
habit of borrowing in literature. — Stories, jests, and bulls, very 
old. — A passage l^i-om Wendell Phillips. — The attempts to reduce 
to fiction the stories of history. — The same stories appearing at 
different times and in different nations. — Instances, by Hay ward, 

— Moore's story of the jeweled lady, who made the famous jour- 
ney during the reign of Brian, King of Munster, told also of Al- 
fred of Frothi, King of Denmark. — An anecdote told of Eginhard 
and the daughter of Charlemagne, told also of a German emperor 
and an unknown damsel. — The story of Canute. — Athenseus and 
the old authors stuffed full of stories that are considered modern. 

— The same story told by Diogenes of Laerte, and by Cardinal 
Retz, of different persons. — The same story told of Sully and King 
Henry that is told of Demetrius and his father. — The story of the 
spider, told of both Bruce and Tamerlane. — The story of the egg, 
told of both Columbus and Brunelleschi. — Anecdote of Southamp- 
ton pairing off with one of Louis XIV. — Stories of Charles I. and 
Bailly. — Stories of Frederick the Great and Vespasian. — Stories 
of Demetrius and an eminent divine in the time of George III. — 
Stories of Cardinal Ximenes and Charles XII. of Sweden. — Stories 
of Michel Angelo and Alexander Pope. — Lycurgus and Dr. 
Johnson. — Boswell, Thomas Corwin, and Sydney Smith. — A re- 
ply of Bickerstaff in one of Steele's Tatlers, borrowed by Betterton, 
and credited to every famous actor since Steele printed it. — 
Lamb's Essay on the Origin of Roast Pig, and the legend of the 
first act of oyster-eating. — Bonaparte and Madame Geoffrin. — 



Vlll CONTENTS. 

A story told of Swift, discovered in a jest-book printed before the 
dean was born. — Repartees of Talleyrand and Prince S. — Stories 
of General Scotland Sir Joshua Reynolds. — Replies of Socrates 
and the wood-sawyer. — Shakespeare's Joan of Arc. — Schiller's 
Don Carlos and William Tell. — Callcott's picture of Milton and 
his daughters. — Stories of Poussin and Haydn. — Story of New- 
ton and the falling apple. — Father Prout and Moore. — Pope's 
Messiah, and Johnson's Latin version of it. — Voltaire and the 
forged Veda. — In every matter that relates to invention, to use, to 
beauty, or to form, we are borrowers. — Passages from Wendell 
Phillips. — Purniture. — Glass. — Gems. — Vase of the Geneva Ca- 
thedral, — Diminutive writing and printing. — The microscope. — 
Colors. — Steel. — Egyptian mechanics. — Ventilation. — Mason- 
ry. — The railroad. — Steam. ■— Locks. — Social questions. — Chi- 
nese magnetic carriages. — Roman types. — An optical lens found 
in Nineveh. — Photography. • — The stereoscope. — Tunnel under 
the Euphrates at Babylon. — Table-turning in China before Con- 
fucius. — Clairvoyance and mesmerism practiced by the ancient 
Tartars, Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans. — The germ of Fourierism 
in the Confessions of Augustine. — A cobbler described by Saadi. 

— The doctrine of universal brotherhood maintained by Cicero. 

— The idea of free government in Marcus Aurelius. — The idea of 
forgiveness of injuries in Epictetus. — The idea of the Golden 
Rule in Confucius. — Substantially the Lord's Prayer claimed to 
have been in use by religious Jews for nearly four thousand years. 

— The thing that hath been is that which shall be, and there is no 
new thing under the sun 164 

VII. 

INCONGRUITY. 

The most delightful picture of home and homefelt happiness drawn 
by Goldsmith, a homeless man. — Byron thought it contradictory 
that the ancients, in their mythology, should have represented Wis- 
dom by a woman, and Love by a boy. — The French theory of three 
sexes: men, women, and clergymen. — A recumbent statue in an 
old church in England, which every one believed was a woman, till 
Flaxman, the sculptor, examined it, and satisfied himself that it was 
a priest. — A lady's opinion of the poet Thomson. — . Savage's cor- 
rection of it. — Sydney Smith pronounced a naturalist, and Lord 
Lansdowne a visionary. — Jeffreys painted with a sweet counte- 
nance. — An observation by Evelyn. — Lavater's and Horace Wal- 
pole's opinions of Lord Anson. — Portrait of Addison. — Happy 
accidents. — Petrarch's Sonnets. — Chesterfield's Letters. — Bos- 
well's Johnson. — Rabelais. — Cervantes. — Fielding. — Robinson 
Crusoe. — The Vicar of Wakefield. — Paradise Lost. — Tristram 
Shandy. — Books that never were published. — Great things rarely 
appreciated at first view. — Niagara. — Mountains. — The sea. — 
London. — Sir Joshua Reynolds and the works of Raphael. — Ob- 
servations by Goethe and Gainsborough. — Persons engaged in the 
same departments of literature or art dislike one another, and can- 



CONTENTS. IX 

not judge one another justly. — Instances. — Smollett and his 
underlings, — How De Foe and Banyan and Izaak Walton and 
Collins suffered by their contemporaries. — Accidental immortality 
of Bott, the barrister, by being painted by Reynolds alongside of 
Goldsmith in the barrister's gig. — Southey's attempt to hoax Hook 
regarding the authorship of The Doctor, — Sydney Smith and the 
Plymley Letters. — Walter Scott and Old Mortality. — Opposition 
to new remedies and inventions, — Peruvian Bark. — Antimony. 

— Inoculation. — Vaccination. — Scissors, — Shirts and Socks, — 
Threshing-machines, — Boots with pointed toes believed to be the 
cause of the plague. — The Father of Lies the author of the Refor- 
mation. — The devil's books an auxiliary.— Powerful effect of the 
foolish ballad of Lilli Burlero. — Auld Lang Syne. — The Last 
Rose of Summer. — Home, Sweet Home, written by a homeless 
man. — Origin of the Marseillaise. — Mother Goose's Melodies. — 
Plays in literature and on the stage. — An anecdote by Matthews. 

— The wise doctor's remedies, — Sayings of Montaigne and Heine. 

— High moral truth often the result less of faith than of skepticism. 

— Climatic changes believed by some to be produced by railroads. — 
Formation of icicles. — Difference in ice. — A propensity belonging 
to common house-cats. — Timidity of the tortoise with regard to 
rain, — Man fullest of contradictions, and his vanity at the bottom 
of most of them, — Charles Townshend's entertaining acquaintance. 

— Darwin alike entertaining to the New Zealand chief. — John 
Chester and Coleridge. — A passage from Hazlitt relating to them. 

— Demosthenes Taylor, who pronounced but one word at a dinner- 
party. — Dr. Johnson's story related to Boswell. — Memorable 
effect of two words. — Story of the mother of Thomas a Becket, 
chronicled by John of Brompton. — One who gained immortal rep- 
utation for his sayings who may be said to have never said anything 
at all — Joe Miller, The man who never uttered a jest has been 
the reputed author of every jest 195 



VIIL 

MUTATIONS. 

Some thoughts on various subjects, left by Swift. — Some fancies 
upon two of them, — Anecdote related by Young. — What Boling- 
broke said of himself as an old man, and as a young one, — De 
Foe's moralizations upon his own life. — Anecdote of Cicero, while 
in Sicily, told by Middleton, — difficulty of finding the grave of 
Archimedes, — Happy request of Anaxagoras, — Ruins symbolize 
the wishes and fate of man. — The corpse of Caesar, — A passage 
from Alger, — The ruins of ancient Mahagam, — Effects of the three 
years' drought in Buenos Ayres, — The career and end of Pompey. 
— Aristotle, in his old age, wearied with persecutions, poisons him- 
self, — Hildebrand, the greatest of all the popes, who loved justice 
and hated iniquity, dies in exile. — The ceremony of Galileo's ab- 
juration. — An account of it by Sir David Brewster. — In five years, 
Charles II. touched twenty-three thousand six hundred and one of 
his subjects for the evil. — The ceremony. — Trial of a woman and 



X CONTENTS. 

her daughter, eleven years old, before the great and good Sir Mat- 
thew Hale, for witchcraft ; and their conviction and execution, prin- 
cipally on the evidence of Sir Thomas Browne. — Effects of super- 
stition on Wolsey. — Credulity of Hooker. — His remarkable mar- 
riage. — Passages from Izaak Walton. — Calamities sometimes 
prove to be blessings. — A saying of Publius Syrus. — Some facts 
of Mabillon and Wallenstein. — Paralysis of Mrs. Flaxman nearly 
cured by a fall. — But for the mental malady of Cowper, the world 
would have had less of good poetry, and fewer perfect letters. — 
The Diverting History of John Gilpin was written by a man 
who lived in perpetual dread of eternal punishment. — Cowper's 
faith in the poor school-master, Teedon. — A similar superstitious 
belief of Tycho Brahe. — Blindness of Homer and Milton and 
Handel. — Deafness of Beethoven. — Homer and Milton had poetic 
visions which light and sight alone never gave to man. — Bee- 
thoven, unable, from defective hearing, to conduct an orchestra, 
produced celestial harmonies. — Philanthropy of John Howard. 

— Passages from Foster and Burke. — In persons of genius de- 
fects often appear to take the place of merits, and weaknesses to 
act the part of auxiliaries. — Passages from Isaac Disraeli and 
Carlyle. — Machiavelli a republican. — The same year in which he 
composed his manual of king-craft, he suffered imprisonment and 
torture in the cause of public liberty. — Passages from Bayle. — 
Sir John Denham, the bitter satirist of marriage, married, in his old 
age, a young mistress of the Duke of York. — A passage from 
Count Grammont. — Amidst the physical barrenness of Sweden 
and Lapland, the taste and talents of Linnaeus were cultivated. — 
An observation of Johnson on the poet Savage. — Lord Rochester. 

— A passage from Bishop Burnet. — Cumberland on Soame 
Jenyns. — Wilberforce, at twenty-one, the idol of the fashionable 
world. — Phillips, while at Harvard University, was president of 
the Gentleman's Club, and the leader of the aristocratic party 
among the students. — Robespierre. — Frederick of Prussia. — Diffi- 
dence of Gray. — Terrified out of his wits at the bare idea of 
having his portrait prefixed to his works, and dying from nervous 
agitation at the publicity into which his name had been forced 
by his learning, taste, and genius. — Modesty and diffidence of 
Irving. — Called a vagabond by one of his neighbors, who threat- 
ened to set his dogs on him. — The author of the Sketch Book 
and an urchin of the neighborhood stealing a do?en of his own 
apples 219 

IX. 

PARADOXES. 

Ignorance bold and knowledge reserved. — Good books unprofitable 
to printers. — A thing so obvious as the vanity of the world little 
known. — Marriage, that least concerns other people, most meddled 
with by other people. — The most delicate friendships most sensible 
to the slightest invasion, and jealousy ever attendant upon the 
warmest regard. — Labor scarce in China. — Spaniards few and 



CONTENTS. XI 

Hollanders many in the pontifical army. — The best buildinj? in 
Iceland a prison, that never contained a prisoner. — The May- 
flower a slave-ship. — Papyrus scarce in Egypt, — Universal house- 
building has produced no stereotyped models. — A great editor, who 
never wrote a line for his journal, and when he died, the paper 
made no mention of the event. — Three powerful books of disputed 
authorship. — Concerning the Bible — Dr. Johnson — Savage — 
Boswell — Luther — John Wesley, Johnson, and Addison — Soc- 
rates — Marlborough — Burns — Goldsmith — Sir George Mac- 
kenzie — Evelyn — Tycho Brahe — Dr. Johnson — Augustus Caesar 

— Talleyrand — Peter the Great — Byron — Schiller — Queen Eliz- 
abeth — Bayle — Smollett — Cowley — Seneca — Sir Thomas More 

— Young — Moliere — Rousseau — Addison — Steele — Shenstone 

— Swift — John Foster — Washington — Webster — Cowper — 
Eldon — Thurlow — Sir Matthew Hale — Charles Lamb — Mary 
Lamb — Tasso — Thomson — Solomon — Marcus Aurelius — Corn- 
modus — Paul and Virginia — The Marseillaise — Old Oaken 
Bucket — Tacitus — Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu — 
A famous speech of Pitt — Two speeches of Lord Chesterfield — 
Forty sermons of Johnson — A paper of The Rambler — Ramblers 
of Dr. Johnson — Language of Rousseau — Burke's Reflections on 
the Revolution in France — Passages in Curran's speeches — Essay 
on Man — Peele, Greene, and Marlowe — Shakespeare — Bacon — 
Apuleius (Lucian, Lucius, and La Fontaine) — Pythagoras — 
Luther, Baxter, and Wesley — Dr. Johnson (Swift and Psalmanazar) 

— Coleridge — Schiller — Vathek — Speech of Beckford's father — 
Michel Angelo, St. Peter's, and the Reformation — Bruce — 
Diogenes — Johnson — De Quincey — Epicurus — Phidias — Canova 

— Goethe — Jerrold — Paul Jones — Bonaparte — John Wesley — 
Persius — Camoens — Paulo Borghese — Bentivoglio — Demos- 
thenes — Socrates — Plato — Theophrastus — Isocrates — Cicero — 
Pope — Plutarch — Correggio — Romanianus — Gordianus — Do- 
mitian — Burns — Newton — Socrates — Gladstone — Chalmers 

— The Admirable Crichton — Marlborough — Sir Isaac Newton's 
verses — First public speech of John Randolph — John Brown — 
The Governor of Virginia — A daughter of John Brown — Theo- 
logical seminary for colored young men at Lumpkin's Jail, the 
slave-market — Richard Realf — Captain John C. Calhoun — One 
of Jefferson Davis's old slaves — Foote — Neander — Plutarch — 
John Stuart Mill — Jonathan EdAvards — Sir John Suckling and 
Richard Lovelace — Milton and Scott — Dr. Lardner — Babinet 

— Renous — Socrates, Cato, Plutarch, and Johnson — Robert Hall 
and Sydney Smith — De Foe — Sheridan — Hugh Miller — Lloyd 

— Hazlitt — Professor Wilson and the poet Campbell — Richard 
Baxter — Theodore de Beza — Dr. Hill — Madame de Montespan 

— Cardinal Bernis and Madame de Pompadour — Rousseau — The 
House that Jack Built and Goody Two Shoes 244 



Xll CONTENTS. 



CONTRASTS. 



The world will never be tired reading and talking of the peculiarities 
and struggles of some of its literary worthies, they seem so in- 
credible. — Goldsmith, for example. — Dinner at the British Coffee 
House to consult upon a name for his comedy, She Stoops to Con- 
quer. — Dinner at the Shakespeare Tavern. — Samuel Johnson. — 
AdHm Drummond. — First acting at Covent Garden Theatre. — 
Goldsmith's anxiety. — Another first actmg at Drury Lane, thirty 
years afterward. — Lamb's farce of Mr. H. — Letter to Manning. — 
Talfourd's description. — Another letter to Manning. — Poor 
Elia! — Steady growth of the genius of Charlotte Bronte, under 
circumstances hardly less awfully depressing. — Elton Hammond, 
one of Lamb's contemporaries. — George Dyer. — A contrast to all 
these ailing souls — the magnificent Christopher North. — Scene 
on the occasion of his first lecture to the moral philosophy class in 
the University of Edinburgh. — His achievements in running, 
walking, and leaping. — Triumph over a not unknown pugilist. — 
Knocks a fellow down who insulted him, and walks back from Lon- 
don to Oxford, a distance of fifty-eight miles, in eight or nine hours. 
— Account of a fishing expedition to Lake Toila. — Interference 
with a carter who was cruelly beating his horse. — Interference at a 
prize-fight — determined to see fair-play. — A description of a fairy's 
funeral — the production of the gigantic professor of moral phi- 
losophy, which is said to have so impressed Lord Jeffrey that he 
never was tired of repeating it 268 



XI. 



It never rains but it pours. — Like sheep are we seen ever running 
in torrents and mobs, if we ever run at all. — A famous compari- 
son of Carlyle. — An observation of Jean Paul. — Fable of the 
Brahman and the three rogues. — Napoleon to Bourrienne. — Ma- 
dame Koland to Robespierre. — Passages from Macaulay and Junius. 

— Story of a King of Bashan. — Misfortunes never'come singly. — 
First a speck, and then a vulture, till the air is dark with pinions. — 
The Attic Philosopher's remarks on the Carnival. — Scaramouche, 
and his snuflF of a thousand flowers. — The ingenious mechanic and 
artist, who turned his hand and head to nothing but serpents. — 
An effect of Harvey's discovery. — In the Arctic regions frost is so 
intense as to burn. — In Arabia the silence of the desert is painful. 

— In Java the most lovely flowers conceal hidden reptiles. — In 
the shady parts of the wood on the shore of Brazil the noise from 
the insects is so loud that it may be heard even in a vessel anchored 
several hundred yards from the shore, yet Avithin the recesses of the 
forest a universal silence appears to reign. — Observations of Cole- 
ridge, Scargill, Horace, and Meyer. — The lark. — The elephant. 



CONTENTS. Xm 

— Legend of Nimrod and the gnat. — Braraante and Michel An- 
gelo. — The Protectorate and the Eestoration. — Cromwell and 
Charles II. — Milton and Wycherley. — Passages from Macaulay. 

— An observation of Taine. — Eemaiks of a bitter rtpul lican to 
Castelar in the streets of Kome. — Paradise and Paris. — Erasmus 
and Luther. — Melancthon and Luther. — Professor Wikon and 
Dr. Blair. — Irony and seriousness of Swift and De Foe. — Imagi- 
nation and truth. — Crusoe and Gulliver. — The peasant and the 
Vicar of Wakefield. — Ignorance and eloquence. — The power the 
negro slaves called Massa Linkum. — Speech of the praise man. 

— Melancholy. — A saying of Curran. — Passages from Burns, 
Hood, Burton, and Solomon. — Hypochondviaci^m of Cervantes, 
Grimaldi, Liston, Butler, Swift, Burns, and Lamb. — Jerrold 
ashamed of the immense success of the Caudle Lectures. — He did 
not like to be talked of as a funny man. — The man and his wife 
who sang humorous couplets in a restaurant at Leipsic. — Johnson's 
remarks of himself, Pope, and Young. — What the author of John 
Gilpin said of himself and his humorous poetry. — Sir Walter 
Scott's bit of self portraiture. — An observation of Goethe. — Scott 
dictated the Bride of Lammcrmoor during his torment from the 
cramp. — Jean Paul wrote a great part of his comic romance, 
Nicholas Margraf, in an agony of heart-break, from the death of 
his promising son Max. — Washington Irving completed that most 
extravagantly humorous of all his works. The History of New 
York, while suffering from the death of his sweetheart, Matilda 
Hoffman. — Many of Hood's most humorous productions were dic- 
tated to his wife, while he himself was in bed, from distressing and 
exhausting sickness. — Anecdotes of him. — Passages from long 
letters written by the author of The Bridge of Sighs to little chil- 
dren, almost from his deathbed. — Anecdote of the hypochondriac 
whom his physician recommended to go to the theatre and see a fa- 
mous comic actor, then in the meridian of his powers. Alas! the 
comedian, who kept crowded theatres in a roar, was the poor hypo- 
chondriac himself . . ._ '294 

XII. 

CONDUCT. 

Hazlitt wanted one thing to make him happy ; but, wanting that, he 
wanted everything. — Donatello's matchless statue of St. George 
wanted one thing, in the opinion of Michel Angelo ; it wanted 
the gift of speech. — The poor widow in Holland, who survived 
twenty-five husbands, wanted one thing more, no doubt, perhaps 
another husband. — A remark of the good Berthold Sachs. — An 
old German engraving, in the manner of Holbein. — A saying of 
Baxter. — Lines by the Earl of Surrey. — Castles in Spain. — A 
passage from Curtis. — Some verses by Poe. — Remarks of Steele, 
in a paper of The Spectator. — Reflecuons of Goethe, Cumberland, 
Sir William Temple, and Dr. Sherlock. — A memorial found in the 
closet of one of tlie most illustrious of the caliphs. — Candide's sup- 
per with the six sceptreless kings who had come to pass the Cami- 



XIV CONTENTS. 

val at Venice. — Experience of Sir Robert Cecil, who sorrowed in 
the bright lustre of the court of Elizabeth. — A passage from Bacon. 

— Madame de Stael to Chateaubriand. — Madame Recamier to her 
niece, — Madame de Pompadour to Prince de Soubise. — Madame 
de Maintenon to her niece. — Coleridge's summing up. — Passages 
from Castelar, Thackeray, Pliny, and Pascal. — How theThracians 
estimated their lives. — Passages from St. Augustine's Confessions. 

— The wonder is that we should live on from day to day, learning 
so little the art of life. — Passages from Helps, Sydney Smith, and 
the author of the Genius of Solitude. — Henry Welby, the Hermit 
of Grub Street. — Content ever dwells in a meek and quiet soul. — 
An anecdote from Walton's Angler. — Passages from Burns, the 
Singhalese Buddhist, and the author of the Imitation. — Pure In- 
tentions. — God's answer to Gabriel. — Those who are most happy, 
in the opinion of Anaxagoras. — Observations by Montaigne, Man- 
deville, Mosheim, and Jeremy Taylor. — The world could not exist 
if it were not so simple. — A remark of Goethe. — Everything has 
its own limits. — An observation of Hazlitt. — What Marcus Aure- 
lius said he learned from his tutor. — An exclamation of the Attic 
Philosopher. — Conclusions of Socrates, Michel Angelo, Epicurus, 
and Jeremy Taylor. — The Scots. — An opinion of Froude. — A 
scene on the Simplon, described by Eckermann. — A man gifted 
with worldly qualities and accommodations remarked upon by 
Cumberland. — Wordsworth's man-servant, James. — Thoughts 
upon childhood and youth, by Goethe, Hazlitt, Wordsworth, Sou- 
vestre, and Pascal. — A remark upon Caesar. — The two extremi- 
ties of knowledge. — The difference between the wise and unwise 
defined by Emerson. — The forest of statues on the whiteroof of the 
Milan Cathedral. — The holy of holies, the little pantheon, at the top 
of the scholar's mind, described by Alger. — Elevated thoughts 
upon life, by Marcus Aurelius, Max Miiller, and Sir Thomas 
Browne. — A reflection of Goethe, at the age of seventy-five. — 
Some lines from Waller. — Mrs. Barbauld's stanza on Life, that 
Madame D'Arblay told the poet Rogers she repeated every night, 
and of which Wordsworth was heard to say to himself, I am 
not in the habit of grudging people their good things, but I wish I 
had written those lines 321 



XIII. 

RELIGION. 

Ah ! sighed Shelley to Leigh Hunt, as the organ was playing in the 
cathedral at Pisa, what a divine religion might be found out if 
charity were really made the principle of it instead of faith. — Story 
to the same effect of Samuel Rutherford and Archbishop Usher, 
related by Dean Stanley. — Legend of the beloved disciple, 
recorded by St. Jerome. — Love would put a new face on this 
weary old 'world. — An observation of Emerson. — The Holy 
Ghost came down, not in the shape of a vulture, but in the form of 
a dove. — A suggestion of old Thomas Fuller. — A passage from 
the Persian. — The author of Ecce Homo urges that we ought to 



CONTENTS. XV 

be just as tolerant of an imperfect creed as we are of an imperfect 
practice. — Some thoughts from Pascal and Castelar. — Some ob- 
servations upon truth, the difficulty of finding it, the necessity of 
repeating it, the resistance it meets with, etc., from Goethe, Black- 
wood's Magazine, and a forgotten author. — The no small stir at 
Ephesus on account of Paul's preaching. — Macaulay's allusion to 
the hanging of Thomas Aikenhead. — An observation of Froude 
upon putting persons to death for speculative theological opinions. 
— Some remarks of Fe'nelon upon a violent zeal that we must 
correct. — An observation of Wycherley upon reproof of friends. — 
Swift and Hunt define eff'ects of imperfect religion. — Landor in- 
veighs against the falsehood of life. — Two religions, which Herbert 
Spencer designates as the religion of amity and the religion of en- 
mity. — A passage on the conduct of the church, from F. W. Rob- 
ertson's sermon on The Tongue. — A sentence from Sir Thomas 
Browne. — Hyacinthe's opinion of the church of the future. — 
Goethe anticipates a religion of feeling and action. — Dean Young's 
opinion of differences between Christians. — Story of the Episco- 
palian Rochecliffe and the Presbyterian Holdenough meeting unex- 
pectedly in prison. — How two gentlemen treated their seconds 
when they found themselves forced into a duel. — Harrington defines 
man as a religious animal. — Passages from Plutarch and Black- 
wood's Magazine on the universality of religion. — The superiority 
of the Christian religion. — Passages from Matthew Arnold, Dr. 
Johnson, Max Miiller, Frances Power Cobbe, Jeremy Taylor, and 
Lecky. — Anecdote of Confucius. — Passages from Dean Young 
and the Persian. — Anecdotes of Fenelon. — Passages from Saadi 
and the Imitation of Christ. — Addison enlarges on a thought of 
Socrates. — Our passions, prejudices, and frailties. — Passages from 
Montaigne, Talleyrand, Basil Montagu, and Jeremy Taylor. — Our 
occupations in life. — Observations from Pascal, Rosch, and Es- 
quirol. — The love of wondering, and of raising wonder. — A pas- 
sage from Shaftesbury. — Curiosity little better than vanity. — An 
opinion of Pascal. — Capacity to discern truth. — Cumberland's 
criticism of Bubb Doddington. — Coleridge's criticism of Home 
Tooke. — Thucydides' saying of Themistocles. — ^sop's fable of 
the two travelers and the chameleon. — Hindoo parable of the 
blind men and the elephant. — Opinions of St. Paul. — A passage 
from Franklin, expressing growing distrust of his own judgment. — 
Passages to the same effect from Sir Thomas Browne and Mon- 
taigne. — John Wesley's warning against forming a hasty judg- 
ment, enforced by an anecdote of one of his parishioners, who lived 
on parsnips to pay debts contracted before he knew God. — Til- 
lotson's two wonders in heaven. — Observations on toleration by 
Coleridge and Dr. King. — Hunt's saying of Lamb. — Anecdotes 
of Abd-el-Lateef, related by Palgrave. — A dialogue on toleration 
and charity, from Helps' Friends in Council. — A new society, the 
members of which should be pledged to assist and animate one 
another in living according to the Sermon on the Mount, suggested 
by Channing. — Reasons why Lincoln never united himself to any 
church. — Legend of St. Brendan and Judas Iscariot, repeated by 
Farrar in his Silence and Voices of God. — Dying exclamation of 



XVI CONTENTS. 

Bunsen. — Legend of Abraham and the old man, whom the patri- 
arch turned out of his tent because he worshiped the fire only, 
and acknowledged no other God. God called to Abraham, and 
asked him where the stranger was. He replied, I thrust him 
away because he did not worship Thee. God answered him, I 
have suffered him these hundred years, although he dishonored me ; 
and couldst not thou endure him one night? — Ah! poor things 
that we are ! — He shall be immortal who liveth till he be stoned 
by one without fault 353 



LIBRARY NOTES. 



I. 

INSUFFICIEXCY. 

It was well said by some one that " in every ob- 
ject there is an inexhaustible meaning ; the eye sees 
in it what the eye brings means of seeing." Here 
is a copy of La Rochefoucauld : William Gowans, 
Nassau Street. The duke gives us a true picture, not 
of human nature, but of its selfishness. " He works," 
said Sterling, " like a painter who paints the profile, 
and chooses the side of the face in which the eye is 
blind and deformed, instead of the otlier, which is 
unblemished. Yet the picture may be a most accu- 
rate copy." So do we all. Those of us that see at 
all, see but a small part of anything at a time. Only 
a nice line upon the column is distinctly visible ; all 
the rest is hidden, or obscured in the glaring light or 
eclipsing shadow. A man, especially, must be looked 
at all around, within, by a fair light, and Avith a good 
eye, to be seen truly or judged justly. We put a 
narrow and fine sight upon him naturally, and can 
hardly avoid estimating him meanly. We have too 
much the habit of Fuseli, who preferred beginning 
his sketch of the human figure at the lowest point, 



18 LIBRARY NOTES. 

and working from the foot upward. " The wisest 
amongst us," said Richardson, '' is a fool in some 
things, as the lowest amongst men has some just no- 
tions, and therein is as wise as Socrates ; so that 
every man resembles a statue made to stand against 
a wall or in a niche ; on one side it is a Plato, an 
Apollo, a Demosthenes ; on the other, it is a rough, 
unformed piece of stone." " Both," said Dr. John- 
son of tlie remarks of Lord Orrery and Delany on 
Swift, "were right, — onl)^ Delany had seen most of 
the good side. Lord Orrery most of the bad." There 
is a curious life of Tiberius, with two title-pages, 
both taken from historical authorities ; two charac- 
ters — one detestable, the other admirable — of one 
and the same person ; made up, both, of recorded 
facts. " A man," said Emerson, " is like a bit of 
Labrador spar, which has no lustre as you turn it in 
your hand, until you come to a particular angle ; then 
it shows deep and beautiful colors." What you think 
of him depends so much on how you look at him. 
As a creature of small ways and little achievements, 
he seems fit only for '' stopping a bung-hole ; " as an 
embodiment of every manly trait and of every Chris- 
tian virtue, he appears indeed " a noble animal, splen- 
did in ashes, and pompous in the grave." The petty 
tyrant of a family, he satirizes Cyesar ; the canting 
bigot of the church, he brings reproach upon relig- 
ion. Now a gentleman, he makes you think of Sid- 
ney ; now a beast, of Swift's revolting Yahoo. When 
truly humble and consciously ignorant, he hath the 
aspect of a child of God ; when conceited, dogmatic, 
aggressive, all the forgotten orthodox teachings of the 



INSUFFICIENCY. 19 

fate of the hopeless come back to you with the force 
of apostolic thunder. As the splendid immortal he 
is destined to be, you hasten to apotheosize him ; as 
the monster he sometimes appears, you wonder that 
he exists. Even Burns, who was a master in human 
nature, and a lover of woman, characterizes her as 
" great for good, or great for evil ; when not an 
angel, she 's a devil." It seems to be nearly impos- 
sible to be moderate. If we are calm or deliberate 
enough to be just, we are almost sure to be indiffer- 
ent. Our ignorance, our education, our interests, our 
prejudices, blind our eyes, darken our minds, or drive 
us to violence. There is nothing half and half about 
us. The little that we see, we see so differently and 
so partially. Ignorance finds its complement in feel- 
ing. " The eyes of critics," said Landor, '' whether 
in commending or carping, are both on one side, like 
a turbot's." Dr^^den affirmed of some of the judges 
of his day, that, right or wrong, they always decided 
for the poor against the rich ; and he quoted a saying 
of Charles 11. , that the crown was uniformly worsted 
in every case which was heard before Sir Matthew 
Hale. 

Perhaps the thing which astonishes us most, when 
we fairly open our eyes upon the world, is the 
diversity in all things. Out in the forest, under 
the spreading tree, looking up at the luxuriant foli- 
age, you may not think of the difference between 
the leaves ; but pull down a limb, and spend an 
hour comparing them ; you find, much as they re- 
semble, that no two are precisely alike. Examine the 
plumage of the owl you cruelly brought down with 



20 LIBRARY NOTES. 

your rifle ; every feather of bis beautiful dress differs 
from every otber ; and, what is more remarkable, 
every fibre of every feather is another feather, still 
more delicate, differing from every other, all of which 
together yield to the pressure of your'hand like floss 
of silk. No wonder he fell upon the mischievous 
mole or mouse as noiselessly as the shadow of a cloud. 
Go down to the sea-shore; the tide is out; there is 
an apparent ^vaste of white sand, a dull extent of 
uniformity; but stretch yourself on the beach, which 
the innumerable differing waves have beaten to in- 
comparable smoothness, and examine leisurely, with 
a good glass, a few hundred of the infinite grains 
whicli you thought to be the same, and you discover 
that they differ, that each is differently shaped, each 
holds the light differently, and, what is more wonder- 
ful than all, each appears to be a shell, or part of a 
shell, which was once the abode of a creature, and a 
different creature from every other inhabiting or that 
ever inhabited any other shell of the ocean. Look 
into the crowded street; the men are all men; they 
all walk upright ; they might wear each other's clothes 
without serious inconvenience ; but could they ex- 
change souls ? " Clothe me as you will," said San- 
cho, "I shall still be Sancho Panza." The soul is 
not twin-born, but the only begotten." " And there 
never was in the world," said Montaigne, " two opin- 
ions alike, no more than two hairs or two grains. 
The most universal quality is diversity." 
' " The nerve-tissue," said an acute physiologist, 
" is never precisely the same in two men ; the blood 
of no two men is precisely alike ; the milk of no two 



INSUFFICIENCY. 21 

women is identical in composition — tliey all vary 
(within certain limits), and sometimes the variation 
is considerable. It is in this that depends what we 
call the difference of ' temperament,' which makes 
one twin so unlike his brother, and makes the great 
variety of the human race." '' Give Professor Owen 
part of an old bone or a tooth, and he will on the in- 
stant draw you the whole animal, and tell you its 
habits and propensities. What professor has ever 
yet been able to classify the wondrous variety of hu- 
man character ? Huw very limited as yet the no- 
menclature ! We know there are in our moral dic- 
tionary the religious, the irreligious, the virtuous, the 
vicious, the prudent, the profligate, the liberal, the 
avaricious, and so on to a few names, but the com- 
prehended varieties under these terms — their mixt- 
ures, which, like colors, have no names — their 
strange complexities and intertwining of virtues 
and vices, graces and deformities, diversified and 
mingled, and making individualities — yet of all the 
myriads of mankind that ever were, not one the 
same, and scarcely alike ; how little way has science 
gone to their discovery, and to mark their delinea- 
tion ! A few sounds, designated by a few letters, 
speak all thought, all literature that ever was or will 
be. The variety is infinite, and ever creating a new 
infinite ; and there is some such mystery in the end- 
less variety of human character." 

Molecular philosophy shows interspaces betwixt 
atom and atom, differing atoms, which can hardly be 
said to touch ; so bodies are formed, and so society 
and public opinion are compounded. " The single 



22 LIBRARY NOTES. 

individual is to collective humanity," says Alger, 
"as the little column of mercurj^ in' the barometer 
is to the whole atmosphere. They balance each 
other, although infinitely incommensurate. A quick- 
silver sea, two and a half feet deep, covering the 
globe, would weigh five thousand million tons. That 
is the heft of the air, — that transparent robe of blue 
gauze which outsags the Andes and the Alps. Its 
pressure is unfelt, yet if that pressure were annulled 
all the water on the earth would immediately fly into 
vapor. Public opinion is the atmosphere of society, 
without which the forces of the individual would 
collapse and all the institutions of society fly into 
atoms." Common sense has been defined to be the 
" average intellect and conscience of the civilized 
world, — that portion of intelligence, morality, and 
Christianity which has been practically embodied in 
life and active power. It destroys pretense and 
quackery, and tests genius and heroism. It changes 
with the progress of society ; persecutes in one age 
what it adopts in the next ; its martyrs of the six- 
teenth century are its precedents and exponents of 
the nineteenth ; and a good part of the common 
sense of an elder day is the common nonsense of our 
our own." 

'' The history of human opinions," says Voltaire, 
"is scarcely anything more than the history of hu- 
man errors." 

John Foster, in one of his thoughtful essays, has 
this suggestive passage : "If a reflective, aged man 
were to find at the bottom of an old chest — where 
it had lain forgotten fifty years — a record which he 



INSUFFICIENCY. 23 

had written of himself when he was young, simply 
and vividly describing his whole heart and pursuits, 
and reciting verbatim many passages of the language 
which he sincerely uttered, would he not read it with 
more wonder than almost every other writing could 
at his age inspire ? He would half lose the assurance 
of his identity, under the impression of this immense 
dissimiLirity. It would seem as if it must be the tale 
of the juvenile days of some ancestor, with whom he 
had no connection but that of name." Says Swift, 
" If a man would register all his opinions upon love, 
politics, religion, learning, etc., beginning from his 
youth, and so go on to old age, what a bundle of 
hiconsistencies and contradictions would appear at 
last." Says Montaigne, ''Never did two men make 
the same judgment of the same thing; and 'tis im- 
possible to find two opinions exactly alike, not only 
in several men, but in the sarne meii^ at different 
times." Says Pope, " What is every year of a wise 
man's life but a censure or critic on the past? Those 
whose date is the shortest live long enough to laugh 
at one half of it ; the boy despises the infant ; the 
man, the boy ; the philosopher, both ; and the Chris* 
tian, all." Diet, health, the weather, affairs, — a 
thousand things, — determine our views. " I knew 
a witty physician," says Emerson, " who found the 
creed in the biliary duct, and used to affirm that if 
there was disease in the liver, the man became a Cal- 
vinist, and if that organ was sound, he became a Uni- 
tarian." Voltaire declared that the fate of a nation 
had often depended on the good or bad digestion of a 
prime minister j and Motley holds that the gout of 



24 LIBRARY KOTES. 

Charles V. changed the destinies of the world. Our 
views change so often that the writer who would be 
consistent would never write at all. The sentence 
that would express liis thought at one time would 
fail at another. Alteration would confuse. An at- 
tempt to find words to express his thoughts upon 
any one thing at all times would be given up in 
despair. Voltaire once praised another writer very 
heartily to a third person. "It is very strange," was 
the reply, " that you speak so well of him, for he 
says you are a charlatan." " Oh," replied Voltaire, 
*' I think it very likely that hotli of us are mistaken." 
Smith gives an account of a lady in weeds for her 
husband who ''came drooping like a willow to Nol- 
lekens, the sculptor, desiring a monument, and de- 
claring that she did not care what money was ex- 
pended on the memor}?- of one she loved so. ' Do 
what you please, but, oh, do it quickly I ' were her 
parting orders. Nollekens went to work, made the 
design, finished the model, and began to look for a 
block of marble to carve it from, when in dropped 
the lady ; she had been absent some three months. 
*Poor soul,' said the sculptor, when she was an- 
nounced, 'I thought she would come soon, but I am 
ready.' The lady came light of foot, and lighter of 
look. 'Ah, how do you do, Mr. Nollekens? Well, 
you have not commenced the model? ' ' Ay, but I 
have, though,' returned the sculptor, ' and there it 
stands, finished ! ' ' There it is, indeed,' sighed the 
lady, throwing herself into a chair; they looked at 
one another for a minute's space or so — she spoke 
first : ' These, my good friend, are, I know, early 



INSUFFICIENCY. 25 

days for this little change,' — she looked at her dress, 
from Avhich the early profusion of crape had disap- 
peared, — ' but since 1 saw you, I have met with an 
old Roman acquaintance of yours who has made me 
an offer, and I don't know how he would like to see 
in our church a monument of such expense to m}^ late 
husband. Indeed, on second thought, it would be 
considered quite enough if I got our mason to put up 
a mural tablet, and that, you know, he can. cut very 
prettily.' •• My charge, madam, for the model,' said 
the sculptor, ' is one hundred guineas.' ^Enormous ! 
enormous ! ' said the lady, but drew out her purse 
and paid it." The mutability of human nature! 
Change, change is the rule. *' I wish the world, 
James," said Christopher North to the Ettrick Shep- 
herd, ''would stand still for some dozen years — till 
I am at rest. It seems as if the very earth itself were 
underfT^oino: a vital chancje. Nothinor is unalterable, 
except the heaven above my head, and even it, 
James, is hardl}^ methinks, at times, the same as 
in former days or nights. There is not much dif- 
ference in the clouds, James, but the blue sky, I 
must confess, is not quite so very blue as it was sixty 
years since; and the sun, although still a glorious 
luminary, has lost a leetle — of his lustre." Gilbert 
White, in his Natural History of Selborne, says he 
*' saw a cock-bullfinch in a cage, which had been 
caught in the fields after it was come to its full col- 
ors. In about a year it began to look dingy ; and 
blackening each succeeding year, it became coal-black 
at the end of four. Its chief food w^as hemp seed. 
Such influence has food on the color of animals!" 



26 LIBKAEY NOTES. 

Darwin, in liis Voyage, says that Captain Sullivan 
told him that " the wild cattle in East Falkland Isl- 
and, originally the same stock, differ much in color; 
and it is a remarkable circumstance, that in different 
parts of that one small island, different colors pre- 
dominate. He remarked that the difference in the 
prevailing colors was so obvious, that in looking at 
the herds from a point near Point Pleasant, they ap- 
peared from a long distance like black spots, whilst 
south of Choiseul Sound they appeared like white 
spots on the hill-sides. Round Mount Usborne, at a 
height of one thousand to fifteen hundred feet above 
the sea, about half of some of the herds are mouse or 
lead colored." " From the westward till you get to 
the river Adur," wrote White, '' all the flocks have 
horns and smooth white faces, and white legs, and 
a hornless sheep is rarely to be seen ; but as soon as 
you pass that river eastward, and mount Beeding 
Hill, all the flocks at once become hornless, or, as 
they call them, poll- sheep ; and have, moreover, 
black faces, with a white tuft of wool on their fore- 
heads, and speckled and spotted legs, so that you 
would think that the flocks of Laban were pastur- 
ing on one side of the stream, and the variegated 
breed of his son-in-law, Jacob, were cantoned along 
on the other." Youatt speaks of the two flocks of 
Leicester sheep kept by Mr. Buckley and Mr. Bur- 
gess, which " have been purely bred from the orig- 
inal stock of Mr. Bakewell for upwards of fifty years. 
There is not a suspicion existing in the mind of any- 
one at all acquainted with the subject, that the owner 
of either of them has deviated in any one instance 



INSUFFICIENCY. 27 

from the pure blood of Mr. Bakewell's flock, and 
yet the difference between the sheep possessed by 
these two gentlemen is so great that they have the 
appearance of being quite different varieties." " We 
may, in truth," says Voltaire, '' be naturally and 
aptly resembled to a river, all whose waters pass 
away in perpetual change and flow. It is the same 
river as to its bed, its banks, its source, its mouth, 
everything, in short, that is not itself ; but changing 
every moment its water, which constitutes its very 
being, it has no identity; there is no sameness be- 
lonmnoj to the river." Said Sir Kenelm Dij^^bv, lonfj 
before Voltaire, " There is not one drop of the same 
water in the Thames that ran down by Whitehall 
yesternight ; yet no man will deny but that it is the 
same river that was in Queen Elizabeth's time, as 
long as it is supplied from the same common stock, 
the sea." 

Lowell, in one of his critical essays, says that " all 
men are interested in Montaigne in proportion as all 
men find more of themselves in him ; and all men 
see but one image in the glass which the greatest of 
poets holds up to nature, — an image which at once 
startles and charms with its familiarity." Montaigne 
himself says, " Nature, that we may not be dejected 
with the sight of our deformities, has wisely thrust 
the action of seeing outward." " Know thyself," 
that Apollo caused to be written on the front of his 
temple at Delhi, appeared to him contradictory. We 
are vain of our knowledge, vain of our virtue, vain of 
everything that pertains to ourselves in the slightest. 
Reading Rochefoucauld's maxims at twenty, one is a 



28 LIBRARY NOTES. 

little surprised that the first and longest should be 
upon self-love ; at fort}^ one is not astonished at the 
rank and importance it has in the philosopher's 33-8- 
tem. " Oil, the incomparable contrivance of nature," 
exclaims Erasmus, " who has ordered all things in so 
even a method that wherever she has been less boun- 
tiful in her gifts, there she makes it up with a larger 
dose of self-love, which supplies the former defects, 
and makes all even." *^ Could all mankind,'' says 
John Norris, "lay claim to that estimate which they 
pass upon themselves, there would be little or no dif- 
ference betwixt laps'd and perfect humanity, and God 
might again review his imnge with y)aternal compla- 
cency, and still pronounce it good." " Blinded as 
they are as to their true character by self-love, every 
man," sa^^s Plutarch, '* is his own first and chiefest 
flatterer, prepared therefore to welcome the flatterer 
from the outside, who only comes confirming the ver- 
dict of the flatterer within." *' Vanity has taken so 
firm hold in the heart of man," says Pascal, " that 
a porter, an hodman, a turnspit, can talk greatly of 
liimself, and is for having his admirers. Philoso- 
phers who write of the contempt of glory, do yet 
desire the glory of writing well ; and those who read 
their compositions would not lose the glory of having 
read them. We are so presumptuous as that we 
desire to be known to all the world ; and even to 
those who are not to come into the world till we have 
left it. And, at the same time, we are so little and 
vain as that the esteem of five or six persons about 
us is enough to content and amuse us." " We cen- 
sure others," says Sir Thomas Browne, " but as they 



INSUFFICIENCY. 29 

disagree from that humor which we fancy laudable 
in ourselves, and commend others but for that wherein 
tliey seem to quadrate and consent with us. So that 
in conclusion, all is but that we all condemn, self- 
love." We think ourselves of great importance in 
the eyes of others, when we are only so in our own. 
Calmly considering it, what can be more astonishing 
than vanity in a middle-aged person ? Know as 
much as it is possible for a human being to know in 
this world, he cannot know enough to justify him in 
being vain of his knowledge. Good as it is possible 
for a human being to be, he cannot be good enough 
to excuse a conceit of his goodness. Yet how com- 
mon it is for full-grown ignorance to have conceit of 
wisdom, and for ordinary virtue to assume the airs of 
saintship. How we shall one day wonder, looking 
back at the world we have left, at the nearly invisible 
mites, like ourselves, tossing tlieir heads in pride, and 
gathering their skirts in self-righteousness, that we 
were ever as vain and shameless as they, and that the 
little things of life ever so engrossed us ! Alas, to 
learn and unlearn is our fate ; to gather as we climb 
the hill of life, to scatter as we descend it ; empty- 
handed alike at the end and at the beginning. 

*' Youth's heritaoje is hope, but man's 
Is retrospect of shattered plans, \ 

And doubtful glances cast before." • 

" All the world, all that we are, and all that we have, 
our bodies and our souls, our actions and our suffer- 
ings, our conditions at home, our accidents abroad, 
our many sins, and our seldom virtues," says Jeremy 



80 LIBRARY NOTES. 

Taylor, "are as so many arguments to make our souls 
dwell low in the valleys of humility." We are not 
what we think ourselves, nor are other people what 
we think them, else this were a different world. 
We know not ourselves, nor others, nor anything, so 
well as to avoid misapprehending everything. Our 
condition is ignorance and humility, and better it 
were if we kept modestly in our beaten paths. 
Whatever we do or are, we are of chief importance 
to ourselves. " The world," says Thackeray, " can 
pry out everj^thing about us which it has a mind to 
know. But there is this consolation, which men will 
never accept in their own cases, that the world 
does n't care. Consider the amount of scandal it has 
been forced to hear in its time, and how weary it 
must be of that kind of intelligence. You are taken 
to prison and fancy yourself indelibly disgraced ? 
You are bankrupt under odd circumstances ? You 
drive a queer bargain with your friend and are found 
out, and imagine the world will punish you ? Psha ! 
Your shame is only vanity. Go and talk to the 
world as if nothing had happened, and nothing has 
happened. Tumble down ; brush the mud off your 
clothes ; appear with a smihng countenance, and 
nobody cares. Do you suppose society is going to 
take out its pocket-handkerchief and be inconsolable 
when you die ? Why should it care very much, then, 
whether your worship graces yourself or disgraces 
yourself? Whatever happens, it talks, meets, jokes, 
yawns, has its dinner, pretty much as before." De- 
pend upon it, the world will not hunt you, nor con- 
cern itself much about you. If you want its favors 



INSUFFICIENCY. 31 

you must keep yourself in its eye. Cicero left Sicily 
extremely pleased with the success of his administra- 
tion, and flattered himself tliat all Rome was cel- 
ebrating his praises, and that the people would 
readily grant him every tiling that he desired ; in 
which imagination he landed at Puteoli, a consider- 
able port adjoining to Baiae, the chief seat of pleas- 
ure in Italy, where there was a perpetual resort of all 
the rich and the great, as well for the delights of its 
situation as for the use of its baths and hot waters. 
But here, as he himself pleasantly tells the story, he 
was not a little mortified by the first friend wliom he 
met, who asked him how long he had left Rome, 
and what news there, when he answered that he 
came from the provinces. " From Africk, I sup- 
pose," says another ; and upon his replying, with 
some indignation, "No; I come from Sicily," a third, 
who stood b}^ and had a mind to be thought wiser, 
said presently, " How ? did you not know that Cicero 
was quaestor of Syracuse ? " Upon which, perceiv- 
ing it in vain to be angr}^, he fell into the humor of 
the place, and made himself one of the company who 
came to the waters. This mortification gave some 
little check to his ambition, or taught him rather how 
to appl}^ it more successfully ; and did him more 
good, he says, than if he had received all the compli- 
ments that he expected ; for it made him reflect that 
the people of Rome had dull ears, but quick eyes ; 
and that it was his business to keep himself always 
in their sight ; nor to be so solicitous how to make 
them hear of him, as to make them see him : so that, 
from this moment, he resolved to stick close to the 



82 LIBKARY NOTES. 

forum, and to live perpetually in the view of the 
city ; nor to suffer either his porter or his sleep to 
hinder any man's access to him. 

As capital in trade must be constantly turning to 
accumulate, so intelligence must be constantly in 
use to be useful. Its value and utiUty and accuracy 
can only be known by constantly testing it. A false 
light leads straight into the bog, and misinformation 
is worse than no information at all. Curiosity has 
need to be on tip-toe, — but cautious, nevertheless. 
Southey tells a story in his Doctor which the Jesuit 
Manuel de Vergara used to tell of himself. When 
he was a little boy he asked a Dominican friar what 
was the meaning of the seventh commandment, for he 
said he could not tell what committing adultery was. 
The friar, not knowing how to answer, cast a per- 
plexed look around the room, and thinking he had 
found a safe reply, pointed to a kettle on the fire, and 
said the commandment meant that he must never put 
his hand in the pot while it was boiling. The very 
next day, a loud scream alarmed the family, and be- 
hold there was little Manuel running about the room, 
holding up his scalded finger, and exclaiming, " Oh 
dear ! oh dear ! I 've committed adultery ! I 've com- 
mitted adultery ! I've committed adultery ! " 

Men are most apt to believe what they least under- 
stand. What they are most ready to talk upon, if 
they knew just a little more about, they would be 
dumb. We are told that shortly after the shock of 
the famous earthquake at Talcahuano, a great wave 
was seen from the distance of three or four miles, ap- 
proaching in the middle of the bay with a smooth out- 



INSUFFICIENCY. 33 

line ; but along the shore it tore up cottages and trees, 
as it swept onward with irresistible force. At the 
head of the bay it broke in a fearful line of white 
breakers, which rushed up to a height of twenty-three 
vertical feet above the highest spring-tides. The 
lower orders in Talcahuano thought that the earth- 
quake was caused by some old Indian women, witches,, 
who, two years before, being offended, stopped the 
volcano of Antuco ! 

Bishop Latimer says that " Master More was once 
sent in commission into Kent, to help to try out, if it 
might be, what was the cause of Goodwin Sands, and 
the shelf that stopped up Sandwich haven. Among 
others, came in before him an old man with a white 
head, and one that was thought to be little less than 
one hundred years old. Quoth Master More, How 
say you in this matter ? What think you to be the. 
cause of these shelves and flats that stop up Sandwich 
haven ? Forsooth, quoth he, I am an old man. I 
think that Tenterden-steeple is the cause of Goodwin 
Sands ; for I am an old man, sir, quoth he, and I may 
remember the building of Tenterden-steeple, and I 
may remember when there was no steeple at all there.. 
And before that Tenterden-steeple was in building, 
there was no manner of speaking of any flats or sands 
that stopped the haven, and therefore I think that 
Tenterden-steeple is the cause of the destroying and 
decay of Sandwich haven ! " (The centenarian's re- 
ply crystallized at once into a proverb and synonym 
for popular ignorance ; but what if the old man had 
in his mind the half of the story omitted by Latimer 
— that the obnoxious steeple had been built by a 



84 LIBRARY NOTES. 

bishop with fifty thousand pounds appropriated to 
build a breakwater ! ) 

The fox that Darwin tells us about in his Voyage 
was dumb in the presence of wonders. " In the even- 
ing," says the naturalist, " we reached the island of 
San Pedro. In doubling the point, two of the officers 
landed, to take a round of angles with the theodolite. 
A fox of a kind said to be peculiar on the island, and 
very rare in it, was sitting on the rocks. He was so 
intently absorbed in watching the work of the offi- 
cers, that I was able, by quietly walking up behind, 
to knock him on the head with my geological ham- 
mer ! " 

" We on this globe," said Voltaire, speaking of 
the slender acquaintance of Europe with the Chinese 
empire, " we on this globe are like insects in a gar- 
den — those who live on an oak seldom meet those 
who pass their short lives on an ash." " We are 
poor, silly animals," says Horace Walpole ; " we live 
for an instant upon a particle of a boundless universe, 
and are much like a butterfly that should argue about 
the nature of the seasons, and what creates their vi- 
cissitudes, and does not exist itself to see an annual 
revolution of them." When Dr. Livingstone returned 
from Africa, after a stay of sixteen years as a mission- 
ary, he was induced to bring with him an intelligent 
and affectionate native, Sekwebu, who had been of 
great service to him. When they parted from their 
friends at Kilemane, the sea on the bar was frightful, 
even to the seamen. This was the first time Sekwebu 
had seen the sea. As the terrible breakers broke 
over them, he asked, wonderingly, " Is this the way 



INSUFFICIENCY. 35 

you go? Is this the way you go?" exclaiming, 
" What a strange country is this — all water to- 
gether ! " * 

At sea, a person's eye being six feet above the sur- 
face of the water, his horizon is only two miles and 
four fifths distant ; yet his tongue will as freely wag 
of the world as if it were all spinning under his eye. 
We freely discuss the ignorance of those we believe 
to be less inteUigent than ourselves, never thinking 
that we are unconsciously the cause of like amuse- 
ment to those who are more intelligent than we are. 
Fewer laugli with us than at us. The grades are so 
many that contrast is more natural than comparison. 
Unfortunately, too, it is only in the descent that we 
can see, and that but a little way. We know it is 
up, up, that we would go, but the rounds of the lad- 
der are but vaguely visible. But a small part, in- 
deed, we perceive of the prodigious sweep from the 
lowest ignorance to possible intelligence. Happily, 
credulity fills the empty spaces, erects itself for orig- 
inal wisdom, and satisfies us with ourselves and ours. 
Thackeray, in one of his best novels, thus satirically 
screams out one of its uses : " Oh, Mr. Pendennis ! if 
Nature had not made that provision for each sex in 
the credulity of the other, which sees good qualities 
where none exist, good looks in donkeys' ears, wit in 
their numskulls, and music in their bray, there would 
not have been near so much marrying and giving in 
marriage as now obtains, and as is necessary for the 
due propagation and continuance of the noble race to 
which we belong ! " "I desire to die," said Horace 
Walpole, " when I have nobody left to laugh with 



36 LIBRARY NOTES. 

me. I have never yet seen, or heard, anything seri- 
ous that v^as not ridiculous Oh ! we are ri- 
diculous animals ; and if angels have any fun in them, 
how we must divert them." 

" I had taken, when a child," says Crabb Robinson, 
" a great fancy to the Book of Revelation ; and I 
have heard that I asked our minister to preach from 
that book, because it was my favorite. ' And why is 
it your favorite, Henry ? ' ' Because it is so pretty 
and easy to understand ! '" 

Writing to Toulmin, Robert Robinson, a witty and 
distinguished clergyman in the last century, biogra- 
phied by George Dyer, gives the following : " Says a 
grave brother, ' Friend, I never heard you preach on 
the Trinity.' ' Oh, I intend to do so as soon as ever 
I understand it ! ' " 

This recalls the rebuke of a clergyman to a young 
man, who said he would believe nothing which he 
could not understand. " Then, young man, your 
creed will be the shortest of any man's I know." 

John Foster's analysis of an atheist you remember, 
— " one of the most daring beings in the creation, a 
contemner of God, who explodes his laws by denying 
his existence. If you were so unacquainted with 
mankind that this character might be announced to 
you as a rare or singular phenomenon, your conject- 
ures, till you saw and heard the man, at the nature 
and the extent of the discipline through which he 
must have advanced, would be led toward something 
extraordinary. And you might think that the term 
of that discipline must have been very long ; since a 
quick train of impressions, a short series of mental 



INSUFFICIENCY. 37 

gradations, within the little space of a few months 
and years, would not seem enough to have matured 
such an awful heroism. Surely the creature that thus 
lifts his voice, and defies all invisible power within the 
possibilities of infinity, challenging whatever unknown 
being may hear him, was not as yesterday a little 
child, that would tremble and cry at the approach of 
a diminutive reptile. But indeed it is heroism no 
longer, if he knows there is no God. The wonder 
then turns on the great process by which a man could 
grow to the immense intelligence that can know that 
there is no God. What ages and what lights are 
requisite for tJiis attainment ! This intelligence in- 
volves the very attributes of the Divinity, while a 
God is denied. For unless this man is omnipresent, 
unless he is at this moment in every place in the uni- 
verse, he cannot know but there may be in some place 
manifestations of a Deity by which even he would be 
overpowered. If he does not know absolutely every 
agent in the universe, the one that he does not know 
may be God. If he is not in absolute possession of 
all the propositions that constitute universal truth, 
the one which he wants may be, that there is a God. 
If he does not know everything that has been done in 
the immeasurable ages tliat are past, some things may 
have been done by a God. Thus, unless he knows 
all things, that is, precludes another Deity by being 
one himself, he cannot know that the Being whose 
existence he rejects does not exist. And yet a man 
of ordinary age and intelligence may present himself 
to you with the avowal of being thus distinguished 
from the crowd ! " 



38 LIBRARY NOTES. 

" I had one just flogging," says Coleridge. " When 
I was about thirteen I went to a shoemaker and 
begged him to take me as his apprentice. He, being 
an honest man, immediately brought me to Boyer, who 
got into a great rage, knocked me down, and even 
pushed Crispin rudely out of the room. Boyer asked 
me wh}^ I had made myself such a fool ? to which I 
answered that I had a great desire to be a shoemaker, 
and that I hated the thouglit of being a clergyman. 
' Why so ? ' said he. ' Because, to tell you the truth, 
sir,' said I, ' I am an infidel ! ' For this, without 
more ado, Boyer flogged me, — wisely, as T think, — 
soundly, as I know. Any whining or sermonizing 
would have gratified my vanity, and confirmed me in 
my absurdity ; as it Avas, I was laughed at, and got 
heartily ashamed of my folly." 

" It is one thing to see that a line is crooked, and 
another thing to be able to draw a straight one," says 
Conversation Sharpe. " It is not quite so easy to do 
good as those may imagine who never try." Says 
Montaigne, " Could my soul once take footing, I 
would not essay, but resolve ; but it is always leaving 
and making trial." " 'T is an exact and exquisite 
life that contains itself in due order in private. Every 
one may take a part in the farce, and assume the part 
of an honest man upon the stage ; but within, and in 
his own bosom, where all things are lawful to us, all 
things concealed, — to be regular, that is the point. 
The next degree is to be so in one's house, in one's 
ordinary actions, for which one is accountable to none, 
and Avhere there is no study or artifice." '' We 
chiefly, who live private lives, not exposed to any 



INSUFFICIENCY. 39 

other view than our own, ought to have settled a pat- 
tern within ourselves, by which to try our actions." 
" Conscience," cries Sterne, " is not a law ; no, God 
and reason made the law, and have placed conscience 
within you to determine." 

How often our virtues and benefactions are but the 
effects of our vices and our crimes ; and as often do 
our vices disguise themselves under the name of vir- 
tues. " We ought not," says Montaigne, *' to honor 
with the name of duty that peevishness and inward 
discontent which spring from private interest and 
passion ; nor call treacherous and malicious conduct 
courage. People give the name of zeal to their pro- 
pensity to mischief and violence, though it is not the 
cause, but their interest, that inflames them. Miser- 
able kind of remedy, to owe a man's health to his 
disease. The virtue of the soul does not consist in 
flying high, but walking orderly ; its grandeur does 
not exercise itself in grandeur, but in mediocrity." 
The greatest man is great in matters of self -conduct ; 
the wisest is wise in little matters of life ; the one is 
never little, the other never foolish. 

" The superior man," says Confucius, " does not 
wait till he sees things, to be cautious, nor till he hears 
things, to be apprehensive. There is nothing more 
visible than what is secret, and nothing more mani- 
fest than what is minute. Therefore, the superior 
man will watch over himself when he is alone. He 
examines his heart that there may be nothing wrong 
there, and that he ma}^ have no cause for dissatisfac- 
tion with himself. That wherein he excels is simply 
his work Avhich other men cannot see. Are you free 



40 LIBRARY NOTES. 

from shame in yom- apartment, when you are exposed 
only to the light of heaven ? " 

"Most men," says Alger, " live blindly to repeat a 
routine of drudgery and indulgence, without any de- 
liberately chosen and maintained aims. Many live to 
outstrip their rivals, pursue their enemies, gratify their 
lusts, and make a display. Few live distinctly to de- 
velop the value of their being, know the truth, love 
their fellows, enjoy the beauty of the world, and 
aspire to God." 

" Life is a series of surprises," says Emerson, " and 
would not be worth taking or keeping if it were not. 
God delights to isolate us every day, and hide from 
us the past and the future. We would look about 
us, but with grand politeness He draws down before 
us an impenetrable screen of purest sky. ' You will 
not remember,' He seems to say, ' and you will not 
expect.' " 

Goldsmith, in one of his delightful Chinese Let- 
ters, gives this illustration of the vanity and uncer- 
tainty of human judgment : " A painter of eminence 
was once resolved to finish a piece which should 
please the whole world. When, therefore, he had 
drawn a picture, in which his utmost skill was ex- 
hausted, it was exposed in the public market-place, 
with directions at the bottom for every spectator to 
mark with a brush, which lay by, every limb and 
feature which seemed erroneous. The spectators 
came, and in general applauded ; but each, willing 
to show his talent at criticism, marked whatever he 
thought proper. At evening, when the painter came, 
he was mortified to find the whole picture one uni- 



INSUFFICIENCY. 41 

versal blot ; not a single stroke that was not stigma- 
tized with marks of disapprobation. Not satisfied 
with this trial, the next day he was resolved to try 
them in a- different manner, and, exposing his picture 
as before, desired that every spectator would mark 
those beauties he approved or admired. The people 
complied ; and the artist, returning, found his picture 
replete wnth the marks of beauty ; eyevj stroke that 
had been yesterday condemned now received the 
character of approbation." 

Irving, in his Knickerbocker's New York, thus re- 
fers to the habit of criticising and complaining in the 
time of William the Testy : " Cobblers abandoned 
their stalls to give lessons on political economy ; 
blacksmiths suffered their fires to go out while they 
stirred up the fires of faction ; and even tailors, 
though said to be the ninth parts of humanity, neg- 
lected their own measures to criticise the measures 
of government. Strange ! that the science of gov- 
ernment, which seems to be so generally understood, 
should invariably be denied to the only ones called 
upon to exercise it. Not one of the politicians in 
question but, take his word for it, could have ad- 
ministered affairs ten times better than William the 
Testy." 

Socrates used to say that although no man under- 
takes a trade he has not learned, even the meanest, 
yet every one thinks himself sufficiently qualified for 
the hardest of all trades, that of government. 

" Whoever would aim directly at a cure of a pub- 
lic evil," says Montaigne, " and would consider of it 
before he began, would be very willing to withdraw 



42 LIBRARY NOTES. 

his hands from meddling in it. Pacuvius Calavius, 
according to Livj^, corrected the vice of this proceed- 
ing by a notable example. His fellow-citizens were 
in mutiny against their magistrates ; he, being a man 
of great authority in the city of Capua, found means 
one day to shut up the senators in the palace, and 
calling the people together in the market-place, he 
told them that the day was now come wherein, at 
full liberty, they might revenge themselves on the 
tyrants by whom they had been so long oppressed, 
and whom he had now, all alone and unarmed, at his 
mercy ; and advised that they should call them out 
one by one by lot, and should particularly determine 
of every one, causing whatever should be decreed to 
be immediately executed ; with this caution, that 
they should at the same time depute some honest 
man in the place of him that was condemned, to the 
end that there might be no vacancy in the senate. 
They had no sooner heard the name of one senator, 
but a great cry of universal dislike was raised up 
a^gainst him. ' I see,' says Pacuvius, ' we must get 
rid of him ; he is a wicked fellow ; let us look out a 
good one in his room.' Immediately there was a pro- 
found, silence, every one being at a stand who to 
choose. But one, more impudent than the rest, hav- 
ing named his man, there arose yet a greater consent 
of voices against him, a hundred imperfections being 
laid to his charge, and as many just reasons being 
presently given why he should not stand. These 
contradictory humors growing hot, it fared worse 
with the second senator and the third, there being as 
much disagreement in the election of the new, as 



INSUFFICIENCY. 43 

consent in the putting out of the old. In the end, 
growing weary of this bustle to no purpose, they be- 
gan, some one way and some another, to steal out of 
the assembly ; every one carrying back this resolu- 
tion in his mind, that the oldest and best known evil 
was ever more supportable than one that was new and 
untried." 

" Among all animals man is the only one who tries 
to pass for more than he is, and so involves himself 
in the condemnation of seeming less." *' The negro 
king desired to be portrayed as white. But do not 
laugh at the poor African," pleads Heine, " for every 
man is but another negro king, and would like to 
appear in a color different from that with which Fate 
has bedaubed him." 

It is even harder, when he is most barbarous and 
besotted in his ignorance, to disturb his complacency 
and self-conceit. *' It was most ludicrous," says Dar- 
win, '^ to watch through a glass the Indians, as often 
as the shot struck the water, take up stones, and, as 
a bold defiance, throw them towards the ship, though 
about a mile and a half distant ! A boat Avas then 
sent with orders to fire a few musket-shots wide of 
them. The Fuegians hid themselves behind the trees, 
and for every discharge of the muskets they fired 
their arrows ; all, however, fell short of the boat, 
and the officer as he pointed at them laughed. This 
made the Fuegians frantic with passion, and they 
shook their mantles in vain rage. At last, seeing 
the balls cut and strike the trees, they ran away, and 
we w^ere left in peace and quietness." 

You remember the famous contest of Dr. Johnson, 



44 LIBRARY NOTES. 

in Billingsgate. He was passing througli tlie mar- 
ket, as the story goes, with Goldsmith, when he was 
rudely jostled and profanely addressed by a mon- 
strous fish-woman. " See how I will bring her down, 
Goldy, without degrading myself," whispered John- 
son. Looking straight at the creature, he said to her, 
deliberately and emphatically, " You are a triangle ! " 
which made her swear louder than ever. He then 
called her *' a rectangle ! a parallelogram ! " That 
made her eloquent ; but the great moralist with his 
big voice again broke through her volubility, scream- 
ing fiercely, " You are a miserable, wicked Jiypothe- 
nuse ! " That dumfounded the brute. She had 
never heard swearing like that. 

Curran, we are told, used to relate a ludicrous en- 
counter between himself and a fish-woman on the 
quay at Cork. This lady, whose tongue would have 
put Billingsgate to the blush, was urged one day to 
assail him, which she did with very little reluctance. 
*'I thought myself a match for her," said he, "and 
valorously took up the gauntlet. But such a virago 
never skinned an eel. My whole vocabulary made 
not the least impression. On the contrary, she was 
manifestly becoming more vigorous every moment, 
and I had nothing for it but to beat a retreat. This, 
however, was to be done with dignity ; so, drawing 
myself up disdainfully, I said, ' Madam, I scorn all 
further discourse with such an individual ! ' She did 
not understand the word, and thought it, no doubt, 
the very hyperbole of opprobrium. ' Individual, jo\x 
wagabone ! ' she screauied, ' what do you mean by 
that ? I 'm no more an individual than your mother 



INSUFFICIENCY. 45 

was ! ' Never was victory more complete. The whole 
sisterhood did homage to me, and I left the quay of 
Cork covered with glory." 

A wise man, who lived a long life of virtue, study, 
travel, society, and reflection ; who read the best 
books and conversed Avith the greatest and best men ; 
the companion of philosophers and scientists ; famil- 
iar with all important discoveries and experiments ; 
after he was three-score and ten, wrote, "It is re- 
markable that the more there is known, the more it 
is perceived there is to be known. And the infinity 
of knowledge to be acquired runs parallel with the 
infinite faculty of knowing, and its development. 
Sometimes I feel reconciled to my extreme igno- 
rance, by thinking. If I know nothing, the most 
learned know next to nothing." " Had I earlier 
known," said Goethe, "how many excellent things 
have been in existence, for hundreds and thousands 
of years, I should have written no line ; I should 
have had enough else to do." Cardinal Farnese one 
day found Michel Angelo, when an old man, walk- 
ing alone in the Coliseum, and expressed his surprise 
at finding him solitary amidst the ruins ; to which he 
replied, " I go yet to school, that I may continue to 
learn." Mrs. Jameson once asked Mrs. Siddons 
which of her great characters she preferred to play ? 
She replied, after a moment's consideration, " Lady 
Macbeth is the character I have most studied.''^ She 
afterward said that she had played the character 
during thirty years, and scarcely acted it once with- 
out carefully reading over the part, and generally the 
whole play, in the morning ; and that she never read 



46 LIBRARY NOTES. 

over the play without finding something new in it ; 
" something," she said, '' which had not struck me 
so much as it oiuflit to have struck me." Dugald 
Stewart said of Bacon's Essays that in reading 
them for the twentieth time he observed sometliing 
which had escaped his attention in the nineteenth. 
" I don't know," said Newton, " what I may seem to 
the world ; but as to myself, I seem to have been 
only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and divert- 
ing myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble 
or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great 
ocean of Time lay all undiscovered before me." Said 
Bossuet, " The term of my existence will be eighty 
years at most, but let us allow it an hundred. What 
ages have rolled before I had my being ! How many 
will flow after I am gone ! And what a small space 
do I occupy in this grand succession of years ! I am 
as a blank ; this diminutive interval is not sufficient 
to distinguish me from that nothing to which I must 
inevitably return. I seem only to have made my ap- 
pearance for the purpose of increasing the number ; and 
I am even useless — for the play would have been just 
as well performed, had I remained behind the scenes." 
Wrote Voltaire, " I am ignorant how I was formed, 
and how I was born. I was perfectly ignorant, for a 
quarter of my life, of the reasons of all that I saw, 
heard, and felt, and was a mere parrot, talking by 
rote in imitation of other parrots. When I looked 
about me and within me, I conceived that something 
existed from all eternity. Since there are beings act- 
ually existing, I concluded that there is some being 
necessary and necessarily eternal. Thus the first 



INSUFFICIENCY. 47 

step which I took to extricate myself from my ig- 
norance overpassed the limits of all ages — the 
boundaries of time. But when I Avas desirous of 
proceeding in this infinite career, I could neither 
perceive a single path, nor clearly distinguish a sin- 
gle object ; and from the flight which I took to con- 
template eternity, I have fallen back into the abyss 
of my orginal ignorance." " Heads of capacity, and 
such as are not full with a handful, or easy measure 
of knowledge, think they know nothing till they 
know all ; which being impossible, they fall," says 
Sir Thomas Browne, " upon the opinion of Socrates, 
and only know they know not an^^thing." Hiero, 
tyrant of Sicily, asked old Simonides to tell him 
what God is. The poet answered him that it was 
not a question that could be immediately answered, 
and that he wanted a whole day to think upon it. 
When that term was over, Hiero asked the answer; 
but Simonides desired two days more to consider of 
it. This was not the last delay he asked ; he was 
often called on to give an answer, and every time he 
desired double the time he had last demanded. The 
tyrant, wondering at it, desired to know the reason of 
it. I do so, answered Simonides, because the more I 
examine the matter, the more obscure it appears to 
me. " I am a fragment, and this is a fragment of 

me," says Emerson "I am very content with 

knowing, if only I could know To know a 

little, would be worth the expense of this world." 
" You read of but one wise man," sa^^s Congreve, 
" and all that he knew was — that he knew nothing." 
" The curiosity of knowing things has been given to 



48 LIBRARY NOTES. 

man for a scourge." " If God," said Lessing, "held 
all truth shut in his right hand, and in his left noth- 
ing but the restless instinct for truth, though with 
the condition of forever and ever erring, and should 
say to me. Choose ! I would bow reverently to his 
left hand, and say, Father, give ! Pure truth is for 
Thee alone ! " 



11. 

EXTREMES. 

" In man there will be a layer of fierce hyena, or of 
timid deer, running through the nature in the most 
uncertain and tortuous manner. Nero is sensitive to 
poetry and music, but not to human suffering : Mar- 
cus Aurelius is tolerant and good to all men but 
Christians." The Tlascalans of Mexico loved, and 
even worshiped, flowers ; but they were cruel to 
excess, and sacrificed human victims with savage de- 
light. The good and the evil lie close together ; the 
virtues and the vices alternate ; so is human power 
accumulated ; alternately the metals and the rags ; 
a terrible Voltaic pile. In the well-bred animal the 
claw is nicely cushioned ; the old Adam is present- 
able. Overhear a beautiful young woman swear, 
and meet her an hour afterward, all smiles and loveli- 
ness, in the drawing-room. Speak with unreserved 
kindness of one lady to another, — both of them very 
lovely creatures, so far as you know, — and receive in 
reply, " Don't I She, of all persons I know, is the 
only one I hate to hear praised." Lad}^ Mary Wort- 
ley Montagu said of the Duchess of Marlborough, 
" We continue to see one another like two persons 
who are resolved to hate with civility." Madame de 
Maintenon and Madame de Montespan met in pub- 



50 LIBRARY NOTES. 

lie, talked with vivacity, and, to those who judged 
only by appearances, seemed excellent friends. Once 
when they had to make a journey in the same car- 
riage, Madame de Montespan said, " Let us talk as if 
there were no difference between us, but on condition 
that we resume our disputes when we return." Pietro 
Delia Valle says that when the Ecce Homo was ex- 
posed during the sermon in the Jesuit church at Goa, 
the women used to beat their servants, if they did 
not cry enough to please them. The distinguished 
Italian traveler referred to had such an absorbing 
fondness for his wife that, when she died, on the 
shore of the Persian Gulf, he embalmed her body, 
and spent one whole year conveying it back through 
India to Rome, where he celebrated her obsequies by 
pronouncing a funeral oration, during the delivery of 
which his emotions became so violent as to choke his 
utterance. Not long after, in a fit of anger, he killed 
his coachman, in the area before St. Peter's, while the 
pope was pronouncing a benediction. In China, not 
long since, the goddess of small-pox was worshiped 
and prayed to preserve the dying emperor, but, hav- 
ing failed to do so, was flogged and burnt. It is 
recorded that after the massacre of St. Bartholomew 
the ladies of the court of Paris went out to examine 
the long row of the bodies of the Huguenot cavaliers 
who had been slain during the tumult, and curiously 
turning them over, when half-stripped of their gar- 
ments, said to each other, " This must have been a 
charming lover ; that was not worth looking at ; " 
and when a fanatic assassin was brought out in the 
square of the Louvre to undergo during four hours 



EXTREMES. 51 

the most frightful tortures which human ingenuity or 
malignity could devise, or the human frame endure^ 
all the ladies of the court assembled to witness the 
spectacle, and paid high prices for seats nearest the 
scene of agony. John Howe's method of conducting; 
public fasts was as follows : " He began at nine 
o'clock with a prayer of a quarter of an hour, read 
and expounded Scripture for about three quarters of 
an hour, prayed an hour, preached another hour, 
then prayed half an hour ; the people then sang for 
about a quarter of an hour, during which he retired 
and took a little refreshment : he then went into the 
pulpit again, prayed an hour more, preached another 
hour, and then, with a prayer of half an hour, con- 
cluded the services." The clergy, too, were some- 
times victims. An instance : '^ The rector of Fittle- 
worth, in Sussex, was dispossessed of his living for 
Sabbath-breaking ; the fact proved against him be- 
ing, that as he was stepping over a stile one Sunday, 
the button of his breeches came off, and he got a, 
tailor in the neighborhood presently to sew it on. 
again." In the early history of New England the 
law compelled the people to attend church, the serv- 
ices commencing at nine o'clock and continuing six 
to eight hours. Near the church edifice stood the 
stocks and the whipping-post, and a large wooden 
cage, in which to confine offenders against the laws. 
The congregation had places assigned them upon the 
rude benches, at the annual town-meeting, according 
to their age and social position. A person was fined 
who occupied a seat assigned to another. The boys 
were ordered to sit upon the gallery- stairs, and three 



52 LIBRARY NOTES. 

constables were employed to keep them in order. 
Prominent before the assembly, some wretched male 
or female offender sat with a scarlet letter on the 
breast, to denote some crime against the stern code. 
Fleeing the mother-country for peace and freedom, 
the descendants of the Puritans persecuted the Quak- 
ers, and burnt tlie incorrigible eccentrics of society 
for witches. We are told that at the time Ireland 
was called the Isle of Saints, " when a child was im- 
mersed at baptism, it was customary not to dip the 
right arm, to the intent that he might strike a more 
deadly and ungracious blow therewith ; and under an 
opinion, no doubt, that the rest of the body would 
not be responsible at the resurrection for anything 
which had been committed by the unbaptized hand. 
Thus, too, at the baptism, the father took the wolves 
for his gossips, and thought by this profanation he 
was forming an alliance, both for himself and the 
boy, with the fiercest beasts of the woods. The son 
of a chief was baptized in milk ; water was not 
thought good enough, and whisky had not then been 
invented. They used to rob in the beginning of the 
year as a point of devotion, for the purpose of laying 
up a good stock of plunder against Easter ; and he 
whose spoils enabled him to furnish the best enter- 
tainment at that time was looked upon as the best 
Christian ; so they robbed in emulation of each other; 
and reconciling their habits to their conscience, they 
persuaded themselves that if robbery, murder, and 
rape had been sins, Providence would never put 
such temptations in their way ; nay, that the sin 
would be, if they were so ungrateful as not to take 



EXTREMES. 63 

advantage of a good opportunity when it was offered 
them." In North Wales, it is stated, when a person 
supposes himself highly injured, it is not uncom- 
mon for him to go to some church dedicated to a cele- 
brated saint, as Llan Elian in Anglesea, and Clynog 
in Carnarvonshire, and there to offer his enemy. He 
kneels down on his bare knees in the church, and 
offering a piece of money to the saint, calls down 
curses and misfortunes upon the offender and his fam- 
ily for generations to come, in the most firm belief 
that the imprecations will be fulfilled. Sometimes 
they repair to a sacred well instead of a church. 
Mrs. Gaskell, in her biography of Charlotte Bronte, 
tells of a squire of distinguished family and large 
property, who died at his house, not many miles from 
Haworth, on]\^ a few years ago. " His great amuse- 
ment and occupation had been cock-fighting. When 
he was confined to his chamber with what he knew 
would be his last illness, he had his cocks brought up 
there, and watched the bloody battle from his bed. 
As his mortal disease increased and it became impos- 
sible for him to turn so as to follow the combat, he 
had looking-glasses arranged in such a manner around 
and above him, as he Iaj, that he could still see the 
cocks fighting. And in this manner he died." Says 
Helps, " Qualities are often inserted in a character 
in the most curious and inharmonious way ; and the 
end is that you have a man who is the strangest 
mixture of generosity and meanness, of kindness and 
severity, even of dishonesty and nobleness. Then 
the passions enter. Sometimes these just fit in, un- 
fortunately, with good points of character, — so that 



54 LIBRARY NOTES. 

one man may be ruined by a passion which another 
and a worse man would have escaped unhurt from. 
Then there are the circumstances to which a character 
is exposed, and which vary so much that it hardly 
seems that people are living in the same world, so 
different are to them the outward things they have to 
contend with. Altogether, the human being becomes 
such a complicated creature, that though at last you 
may know something about some one specimen, — 
what it will say and what it will do on a given occa- 
sion, — you never know enough about the creature to 
condemn it." "Neither the vices nor the virtues of 
man," says Taine, " are his nature ; to praise or to 
blame him is not to know him ; approbation or disap- 
probation does not define him ; the names of good or 
bad tell us nothing of what he is. Put the robber 
Cartouche in an Italian court of the fifteenth cent- 
ury ; he would be a great statesman. Transport 
this nobleman, stingy and narrow-minded, into a 
shop ; he will be an exemplary tradesman. This 
public man, of inflexible probity, is in his drawing- 
room an intolerable coxcomb. This father of a fam- 
ily, so humane, is an idiotic politician. Change a 
virtue in its circumstances, and it becomes a vice ; 
change a vice in its circumstances, and it becomes a 
virtue. Regard the same quality from two sides ; on 
one it is a fault, on the other a merit. The essential 
of a man -is found concealed far below these moral 
badges. A character is a force, like gravity, weight, 
or steam, capable, as it may happen, of pernicious or 
profitable effects, and which must be defined other- 
wise than by the amount of weight it can lift or the 



EXTREMES. 65 

havoc it can cause. It is therefore to ignore man, to 
reduce him to an aggregate of virtues and vices ; it is 
to lose sight in him of all but the exterior and social 
side ; it is to neglect the inner and natural element." 
" The three sects that at one time chiefly engrossed 
the philosophical part of Rome were the Stoic, the 
Epicurean, and the Academic ; and the chief orna- 
ments of each were Cato, Atticus, and Cicero, who 
lived together in strict friendship, and a mutual es- 
teem of each other's virtue." " Yet," saj^s Montaigne, 
" in all the courts of ancient philosophy this is to 
be found, that the same lecturer there publishes the 
rules of temperance, and at the same time discourses 
of love and wantonness." " I know not," said the 
courtesan Lais, " what they talk of books, wisdom, 
and philosophy ; but these men knock as often at my 
door as any others." Says Bayle, in his Critical Dic- 
tionary, ^* It was reported that Pericles turned out 
his wife, and lodged with Aspasia, a Magarian bawd, 
and plunged himself into lewdness, and spent a great 
part of his estate upon her. She was a woman of so 
great parts that Socrates went to see her, and carried 
his friends with him ; and, to speak more clearly, she 
taught him rhetoric and politics. That which is 
most strange is, that those who frequented her car- 
ried their wives to her house, that they might hear 
her discourses and lectures, though she kept several 
courtesans at home. Pericles went to see Aspasia 
twice a day, and kissed her when he went in and 
when he came out ; which was before he married her. 
She was accused of two crimes by the comedian 
Hermippus. He made himself a party against her 



56 LIBRARY NOTES. 

in due form, and accused her before the judges of im- 
piety, and of draAving Avomen into her house to satisfy 
the kist of Pericles. During the trial of Aspasia, 
Pericles used so many entreaties with the judges, and 
shed so many tears, that he obtained her absolution. 
The AtheHians said that Phidias, the most excellent 
sculptor in the world, and surveyor-general of all the 
works which Pericles ordered to be made for the or- 
nament of the city, drew in the ladies mider pretense 
of showing them the works of the greatest masters ; 
but in truth, to debauch and deliver them to Peri- 
cles." 

" Good and bad men are each less so than they 



** When man's first incense rose above the plain, 
Of earth's two altars, one was built by Cain." 

" As there is," said Coleridge, " much beast and some 
devil in man, so is there some angel and some God in 
man. The beast and the devil maybe conquered, but 
in this life never destroyed." " I have ever delighted," 
said Bos well, " in that intellectual chemistry which 
can separate good qualities from evil in the same per- 
son." Hart, a Calvinistic Baptist minister, in Crabb 
Robinson's time, was so good a preacher and so bad 
a liver that it was said to him once, " Mr. Hart, when 
I. hear you in the pulpit, I wish you were never out 
of it ; when I see you out of it, I wish you were never 
in it." One Mr. Nicholls, a Yorkshire clergyman in 
the days immediately succeeding the Reformation, 
who was " much addicted to drinking and company- 
keeping," used to say to his companions, " You must 



EXTREMES. 57 

not lieed me but when I am got three feet above the 
earth," that was, into the pulpit. Cotton Mather 
has preserved a choice specimen of invective against 
Dr. Owen, by one of the primitive Quakers, whose 
name was Fisher. It was, says Southey, a species of 
rhetoric in which they indulged freely, and exceeded 
all other sectarians. Fislier addressed him thus : 
" Thou fiery fighter and green-headed trumpeter ; 
thou hedgehog and grinning dog ; tliou bastard, that 
tumbled out of the mouth of the Babylonish bawd ; 
thou mole ; thou tinker ; thou lizard ; thou bell of 
no metal, but the tone of a kettle ; thou wheelbar- 
row ; thou whirlpool ; thou whirligig ; oh, thou fire- 
brand ; thou adder and scorpion ; thou louse ; thou 
cow-dnng ; thou moon-calf ; thou ragged tatterde- 
malion ; thou Judas : thou livest in philosophy and 
logic, Avhich are of the devil." The good Luther was 
a violent saint sometimes. Hear him express himself 
on the Catholic divines : " The papists are all asses, 
and will always remain asses. Put them in whatever 
sauce you choose, boiled, roasted, baked, fried, skinned, 
beat, hashed, they are always the same asses." Hear 
him salute the pope : " The pope was born out of 
the devil's posteriors. He is full of devils, lies, blas- 
phemies, and idolatries ; he is anti-Christ ; the rob- 
ber of churches ; the ravisher of virgins ; the greatest 
of pimps ; the governor of Sodom, etc. If the Turks 
lay hold of us, then we shall be in the hands of the 
devil ; but if we remain with the pope, Ave shall be 
in hell. What a pleasing sight would it be to see the 
pope and the cardinals hanging on one gallows, in 
exact order, like the seals which dangle from the bulls 



68 LIBRARY NOTES. 

of the pope ! What an excellent council would they 
hold under the gallows ! " And hear him upon Henry 
VIII. : " It is hard to say if folly can be more foolish, 
or stupidity more stupid, than is the head of Henry. 
He has not attacked me with the heart of a king, bat 
with the impudence of a knave. This rotten worm 
of the earth, having blasphemed the majesty of my 
King, I have a just right to bespatter his English 
majesty with his own dirt and ordure. This Henry 
has lied." The good Calvin was alike violent. He 
hated Catholic and Lutheran. " His adversaries are 
never others than knaves, lunatics, drunkards, and as- 
sassins. Sometimes they are characterized by the fa- 
miliar appellatives of bulls, asses, cats, and hogs." 
Beza, the disciple of Calvin, imitated his master. 
Upon a Lutheran minister, Tilleman, he bestowed 
these titles of honor : '' Polyphemus ; an ape ; a great 
ass who is distinguished from other asses by wearing 
a hat ; an ass on two feet ; a monster composed of 
part of an ape and wild ass ; a villain who merits 
hanging on the first tree we find." As to the Catho- 
lics, there is no end to the anathemas and curses of 
the Fathers. 

One of the old bishops called anger " the sinews 
of the soul." It helped to fortify the rugged re- 
former in his conflicts, and illuminated the perilous 
way he trod. '' We oft by lightning read in darkest 
nights." It is said the finest wine is pressed from 
vintages which grow on fields once inundated with 
lava. *' I never work better," said Luther, " than 
when I am inspired by anger ; when I am angry I 
can write, praj^, and preach well ; for then my whole 



EXTREMES. 69 

temperament is quickened, my vindef standing sharp- 
ened, and all mundane vexations and temptations 
depart." Barke said, *' a vigorous mind is as neces- 
saril}^ accompanied with violent passions as a great 
fire with great heat." " No revolution (in public 
sentiment), civic or religious," said Sir Gilbert 
Elliot, " can be accomplished without that degree of 
ardor and passion which, in a later age, will be mat- 
ter of ridicule to men who do not feel the occasion, 
and enter into the spirit of the times." " Our pas- 
sions," said John Norris, " were given us to perfect 
and accomplish our natures, though by accidental 
misapplications to unworthy objects, they may turn 
to our degradation and dishonor. We may, indeed, 
be debased as well as ennobled by them ; but then the 
fault is not in the large sails, but in the ill conduct of 
the pilot, if our vessel miss the haven." When one 
commended Charillus, the king of Sparta, for a gen- 
tle, a good, and a meek prince, his colleague said, 
" How can he be good who is not an enemy even 
to vicious persons ? " Erasmus said of Luther that 
there were two natures in him : sometimes he wrote 
like an apostle, sometimes like a raving ribald. 
" When he was angry, invectives rushed from him 
like bowlder rocks down a mountain torrent in flood." 
But of vanity he had no trace. '' Do not call your- 
selves Lutherans," he said ; " call yourselves Chris- 
tians. Who and what is Luther? Has Luther been 
crucified for the world ? " 

*' The Latin tongue," says Montaigne, '• is, as it 
were, natural to me ; I understand it better than 
French, but I have not used to speak it, nor hardly 



60 LIBRAEY NOTES. 

to write it, these forty years ; and yet, upon an 
extreme and sudden emotion, which I have fallen 
into twice or thrice in my life, and once on. seeing 
my father, in perfect health, fall upon me in a swoon, 
I have always uttered my first outcries and ejacula- 
tions in Latin ; nature starting up and forcibly 
expressing itself, in spite of so long a discontinua- 
tion." " Nature," says Bacon, " will be buried a 
great time, and 3^et revive upon the occasion or temp- 
tation ; like as it was with ^sop's damsel, turned 
from a cat to a woman, who sat very demurely at the 
board's end till a mouse ran before her." '' A frog," 
said Publius Syrus, " would leap from a throne of 
gold into a puddle." Layard relates an incident of 
the party of Arabs which for some time had been 
employed to assist him in excavating amongst the 
ruins of Nineveh. One evening, after their day's 
work, he observed them following a flock of sheep 
belonging to the people of the village, shouting their 
war-cry, flourishing their swords, and indulging in 
the most extravagant gesticulations. He asked one 
of the most active of the party to explain to him the 
cause of such violent proceedings. " O Bey ! " they 
exclaimed almost together, " God be praised, we have 
eaten butter and wheaten bread under your shadow, 
and are content ; but an Arab is an Arab. It is not 
for a man to carry about dirt in baskets, and to use a 
spade all his life ; he should be with his sword and 
his mare in the desert. We are sad as we think of 
the daj^s when we plundered the Anayza, and we 
must have excitement or our hearts must break. 
Let us then believe that these are the sheep we have 



EXTREMES. 61 

taken from the enemy, and that we are driving them 
to our tents." And off they ran, raising their wild 
cry, and flourishing their swords, to the no small 
alarm of the shepherd, who saw his sheep scamper- 
ing in all directions. Hazlitt related an Indian 
legend of a Brahman, *' who was so devoted to ab- 
stract meditation, that in the pursuit of philosophy 
he quite forgot his moral duties, and neglected ablu- 
tion. For this he was degraded from the rank of 
humanity, and transformed into a monkey. But even 
when a monkey he retained his original propensities, 
for he kept apart from other monkey's, and had no 
other delight than that of eating cocoanuts, and 
studying metaphysics." " Perhaps few narratives in 
history or mythology," says Carlyle, " are more sig- 
nificant than that Moslem one of Moses and the 
Dwellers by the Dead Sea. A tribe of men dwelt 
on the shores of that same asphaltic lake ; and 
having forgotten, as we are all too prone to do, the 
inner facts of Nature, and" taken up with the falsi- 
ties and other semblances of it, were fallen into sad 
conditions, — verging, indeed, towards a certain far 
deeper lake. Whereupon it pleased kind Heaven to 
send them the prophet Moses, with an instructive 
word of warning out of which might have sprung 
'remedial measures ' not a few. But no : the men of 
the Dead Sea discovered, as the valet-species always 
does in heroes or prophets, no comeliness in Moses ; 
listened with real tedium to Moses, with light grin- 
ning, or splenetic sniffs and sneers, affecting even to 
yawn ; and signified, in short, that they found him a 
humbug, and even a bore. Such was the candid 



62 LIBRARY NOTES. 

theory these men of the asphalt lake formed to 
themselves of Moses, that probably he was a hum- 
bug, that certainly he was a bore. Moses withdrew ; 
but Nature and her rigorous veracities did not with- 
draw. The men of the Dead Sea, when we next 
went to visit them, were all changed into apes, sit- 
ting on the trees there, grinning now in the most 
wwaffected manner ; gibbering and chattering very 
genuine nonsense ; finding the whole universe now 
a most indisputable humbug ! The universe has he- 
come a humbug to those apes who thought it one. 
There they sit and chatter, to this hour : only, I 
believe, every Sabbath, there returns to them a be- 
wildered half-consciousness, half-reminiscence ; and 
they sit with their wizened, smoke-dried visages, 
and such an air of supreme tragicality as apes may, 
looking out through those blinking, smoke-bleared 
eyes of theirs, into the wonderfulest universal smoky 
twilight and undecipherable disordered dusk of 
things ; wholly an uncertainty, unintelligibility, 
they and it, and for commentary thereon, here and 
there an unmusical chatter or mew, — truest, trag- 
icalest humbug conceivable by the mind of man or 
ape ! They made no use of their souls ; and so 
have lost them. Their worship on the Sabbath now 
is to roost there, with unmusical screeches, and half- 
remember that they had souls." The shark is said 
to have been the god the Sandwich Islanders, in their 
savage state, chiefly worshiped, or sought to propi- 
tiate. In their present semi-civilized, semi- Christian- 
ized condition, it is said, they pray, and sing, and 
moralize, in fair weather ; but when they get into 



EXTREMES. 63 

trouble they call upon the shark-god of their fathers 
for help or deliverance. Sir Walter Scott used to 
tell a story of a placid minister, near Dundee, who, 
in preaching on Jonah, said, '' Ken ye, brethren, 
what fish it was that swallowed him ? Aiblins je 
may think it was a shark ; nae, nae, my brethren, it 
was nae shark ; or aiblins ye may think it was a 
sammon ; nae, nae, my brethren, it was nae sammon ; 
or aiblins ye may think it was a dolphin ; nae, nae, 
my brethren, it was nae dolphin." Here an old 
woman, thinking to help her master out of a dead 
lift, cried out, '' Aiblins, sir, it was a dunter " (the 
vulgar name of a species of whale common to the 
Scotch coast). " Aiblins, madam, ye 're an auld 
witch for taking the word of God out of my mouth," 
was the reply of the disappointed rhetorician. As 
Dr. Johnson was riding in a carriage through London 
on a rainy day, he overtook a poor woman carrying 
a baby, without any protection from the weather. 
Making the driver stop the coach, he invited the 
poor woman to get in with her child, which she did. 
After she had seated herself, the doctor said to her, 
" My good woman, I think it most likely that the 
motion of the coach will wake your child in a little 
while, and T wish you to understand that if you talk 
any baby-talk to it, you will have to get out of the 
coach." As the doctor had anticipated, the child 
soon awoke, and the forgetful mother exclaimed to 
it : " Oh ! the little dear, is he going to open his 
^y^sy-pysy ? " " Stop the coach, driver ! " shouted 
Johnson ; and the woman had to get out and finish 
her journey on foot. Frederick William, of Prus- 



64 LIBRARY NOTES. 

sia, father of the great Frederick, had a way of 
addressing, familiarly, the people he met in the 
streets of Berlin, utterly indifferent, we are told, t-o 
his own dignit}^ and to the feelings of others ; if he 
could devise something that was not quite agreeable, 
it was sure to be said. The fear of such encounters 
sometimes made nervous people indiscreetly evade 
the royal presence. One Jew having fairly taken 
to his heels, he was pursued by the king in hot 
haste. '' Why did you run away from me ? " said 
the king, when he came up with him in breathless 
dudgeon. " From fear," answered the Jew, in the 
most ingenuous manner ; but the rejoinder of the 
king was a hearty thwack with his cane, who roared 
out that he wished himself to be loved and not to 
be feared. Dr. Livingstone, when he first went into 
Africa, as a missionary, attached himself to the tribe 
of Bakwains. Their chief, Sechele, embraced Chris- 
tianity, and became an assiduous reader of the Bible, 
the eloquence of Isaiah being peculiarly acceptable 
to him, and he was wont to sa}^, " He was a fine 
man, that Isaiah: he knew how to speak." But his 
people were not so ready for conversion, although he 
calmly proposed to have them flogged into faith: 
" Do you imagine," he said, " these people will ever 
believe by your merely talking to them ? I can 
make them do nothing except by thrashing them ; 
and if you like I shall call my head men, and with 
our litupa (whips of rhinoceros hide) we will soon 
make them believe altogether." We have it upon 
authority that when a fugitive from one of the early 
Protestant missions in New California was captured, 



EXTREMES. 65 

he was " broiiglitback again to the mission, where he 
was bastinadoed, and an iron rod of a foot or a foot 
and a half long, and an inch in diameter, was fastened 
to one of his feet, which had the double use of pre- 
venting him from repeating the attempt, and of fright- 
ening others from imitating him." Southey says that 
** one of the missionaries whom Virgilius, the bishop 
of Salzburg, sent among the Slavonic people, made 
the converted serfs sit with him at table, where wine 
was served to them in gilt beakers, while he ordered 
their unbaptized lords to sit on the ground, out of 
doors, where the food and wine was thrown before 
them, and they were left to serve themselves." 
*' Seeing a large building," relates Robinson, " I 
asked a man who looked like a journeyman weaver 
what it was. He told me a grammar-school. ' But, 
sir,' he added, ' I think it would become you better 
on the Lord's day morning to be reading your Bible 
at home, than asking about public buildings.' I very 
quickly answered : ' My friend, you have given me a 
piece of ver}^ good advice ; let me give you one, and 
we may both profit by our meeting. Beware of spir- 
itual pride.' The man scowled with a Scotch surli- 
ness, and, apparently, did not take my counsel with 
as much good humor as I did his." *^ In one of the 
debates on the Catholic question," said Lord Byron, 
" when we were either equal or within one (I forget 
which), I had been sent for in great haste to a ball, 
which I quitted, I confess, somewhat reluctantly, to 
emancipate five millions of people." Some ladies 
bantering Selwyn on his want of feeling, in attend- 
ing to see Lord Lo vat's head cut off, " Why," he 



6Q LIBRARY NOTES. 

said, *' I made amends by going to the undertaker's 
to see it sewn on again." " I have," says Heine, 
" the most peaceable disposition. My desires are a 
modest cottage with thatched roof — but a good bed, 
good fare, fresh milk and butter, flowers by my win- 
dow, and a few fine trees before the door. And if 
the Lord wished to fill my cup of happiness. He 
would grant me the pleasure of seeing some six or 
seven of my enemies hanged on those trees. With 
a heart moved to pity, I would, before their death, 
forgive the injury they had done me during their 
lives. Yes, we ought to forgive our enemies — but 
not until they are hanged." Some would pursue 
them after they are hanged. " Our measure of 
rewards and punishments," says Thackeray, " is most 
partial and incomplete, absurdly inadequate, utterly 
worldly, and we wish to continue it into the next 
world. Into that next and awful world we strive to 
pursue men, and send after them our impotent party 
verdicts, of condemnation or acquittal. We set up 
our paltry little rods to measure Heaven immeasur- 
able, as if, in comparison to that, Newton's mind, or 
Pascal's, or Shakespeare's, was any loftier than 
mine; as if the ray which travels from the sun 
would reach me sooner than the man who blacks my 
boots. Measured by that altitude, the tallest and 
the smallest among us are so alike diminutive and 
pitifully base that I say we should take no count of 
the calculation, and it is a meanness to reckon the 
difference." 

Tertullian, according to Lecky, had written a trea- 
tise dissuading the Christians of his day from fre- 



EXTREMES. 67 

quentiiig the public spectacles. He had collected on 
the subject many arguments, some of them very- 
powerful, and others extremely grotesque ; but he 
perceived that to make his exhortations forcible to 
the majority of his readers, he must point them to 
some counter-attraction. He accordingly proceeded 
— and his style assumed a richer glow and a more 
impetuous eloquence as he rose to the congenial 
theme — to tell them that a spectacle was reserved for 
them, so fascinating and so attractive that the most 
joyous festivals of earth faded in insignificance by the- 
comparison. That spectacle was the agonies of their- 
fellow-countrymen as they writhe amid the torments; 
of hell. " What ! " he exclaimed, " shall be the- 
magnitude of that scene ! How shall I wonder !' 
How shall I laugh ! How shall I rejoice ! How shall: 
I triumph, when I behold so many and such illusr 
trious kings, who were said to have mounted into 
heaven, groaning with Jupiter their god in the lowest 
darkness of hell! Then shall the soldiers who had 
persecuted the name of Christ burn in more criiel fire 
than any they had kindled for the saints. Then shall 
the tragedians pour forth in their own misfortune 
more piteous cries than those with which they had 
made the theatre to resound, while the comedian's 
powers shall be better seen as he becomes more flex- 
ible by the heat. Then shall the driver of the circus 
stand forth to view, all blushing in his flaming chariot, 
and the gladiators pierced, not by spears, but by darts 
of fire. Compared with such spectacles, with such 
subjects of triumph as these, what can praetor or 
consul, qusestor or pontiff, afford? And even now 



68 LIBRARY NOTES. 

faith can bring tliem near, imagination can depict 
them as present ! " Crabb Robinson says some one 
at a party at which he was present, abusing Mahoniet- 
anism in a commonplace way, said : '' Its heaven is 
quite material." He was met with the quiet remark, 
" So is the Christian's hell ; " to which there was no 
reply. In the time of Tertullian, '' the angel in the 
Last Judgment was constantly represented weighing 
the souls in a literal balance, while devils clinging to 
the scales endeavored to disturb the equilibrium." 
" The redbreast, according to one popular legend, 
was commissioned by the Deity to carry a drop of 
water to the souls of unbaptized infants in hell, and 
its breast was singed in piercing the flames." " A 
Calvinistic divine, of the name of Petit Pierre, was 
ejected from his church at Neufchatel for preaching 
and publishing the doctrine that the damned would at 
some future period be pardoned. A member said to 
him, ' My good friend, I no more believe in the 
eternity of hell than yourself ; but recollect that it 
may be no bad thing, perhaps, for your servant, your 
tailor, and your lawyer, to believe in it.' " We are 
told of a country clergyman in France, who, having 
had a great number of sheep stolen from him, at 
length said to his hearers, in the course of one of his 
sermons, " I cannot conceive wdiat Christ was think- 
ing about when he died for such a set of scoundrels 
as you are." This assault reminds one of the car- 
rancha, a kind of hawk in South America, which 
" picks off the scabs from the sore backs of horses 
and mules. The poor animal, on the one hand, with 
its ears down, and back arched, and, on the other. 



EXTREMES. 69 

the hovering bird eying at the distance of a yard the 
disgusting morsel, form a picture -which has been 
described by Captain Hill with his peculiar spirit 
and accuracy." The carrancha also pursues the gal- 
linazo, one of the carrion-eating tribe, " till that bird 
is compelled to vomit up the carrion it may have re- 
cently gorged." Mrs. Gaskell relates this of Rev. 
William Grimshaw, curate of Haworth for twenty 
years, who "was occasionally assisted b}^ Wesley and 
Whitefield, and at such times the little church proved 
much too small to hold the throng that poured in from 
distant villages, or lonely moorland hamlets ; and fre- 
quently they were obhged to meet in the open air ; 
indeed there was not room enough in the church even 
for the communicants. Mr. Whitefield was once 
preaching in Haworth, and made use of some such 
expression, as that he ' hoped there was no need to 
say much to this congregation, as they had sat under 
so pious and godly a minister for so many years ; ' 
whereupon Mr. Grimshaw stood up in his place, and 
said with a loud voice, ' Oh, sir ! for God's sake do 
not speak so. I pray you do not flatter them. I fear 
the greater part of them are going to hell with their 
eyes open.' " Cowper's friend, Newton, says this in 
one of his letters : *' A friend of mine was desired to 
visit a woman in prison ; he was informed of her evil 
habits of life, and therefore spoke strongly of the ter- 
rors of the Lord, and the curses of the law : she 
heard him a while, and then laughed in his face ; upon 
this he changed his note, and spoke of the Saviour, 
and what he had done and suffered for sinners. He 
had not talked long in this strain before he saw a 



70 LIBRARY NOTES. 

tear or two in her eyes: at length she interrupted 
him by saying : ' Why, sir, do you think there can be 
any hope of mercy for me ? ' He answered, * Yes, if 
you feel your need of it, and are willing to seek it in 
God's appointed way. I am sure it is as free for you 
as for myself.' She replied, ' Ah, if I had thought 
80, 1 should not have been in this prison. I long since 
settled it in my mind that I was utterly lost ; that 
I had sinned beyond all possibility of forgiveness, 
and that made me desperate.' " " The most awfully 
tremendous of all metaphysical divines," wrote Rob- 
inson, " is the American ultra Calvinist, Jonathan 
Edwards, whose book on Original Sin I unhappily 
read when a very young man. It did me an irrepar- 
able mischief." 

"Soon after the accession of James I. to the throne 
of England," writes Lecky, in his History of Ration- 
alism in Europe, " a law was enacted which subjected 
witches to death on the first conviction, even though 
they should have inflicted no injur}^ upon their neigh- 
bors. This law was passed when Coke was attorney- 
general, and Bacon a member of Parliament ; and 
twelve bishops sat upon the commission to which it 
was referred. The prosecutions were rapidly multi- 
plied throughout the country, but especially in Lan- 
cashire, and at the same time the general tone of lit- 
erature was strongly tinged with the superstition. Sir 
Thomas Browne declared that those who denied the 
existence of witchcraft were not only * infidels, but 
also, by implication, atheists,' In Cromwell's time 
there was still greater persecution. Tbe county of 
Suffolk was especially agitated, and the famous 



EXTREMES. 71 

witch-finder, Matthew Hopkins, pronounced it to 
be infested with witches. A commission was accord- 
ingly issued, and two distinguished Presbyterian di- 
vines were selected by the Parhament to accompany 
it. It would have been impossible to take any meas- 
ure more calculated to stimulate the prosecutions, 
and we accordingly find that in Suffolk sixty persons 
were hung for witchcraft in a single year. In 1664 
two women were hung in Suffolk, under a sentence 
of Sir Matthew Hale, who took the opportunity of 
declaring that the reality of witchcraft was unques- 
tionable; 'for, first, the Scriptures had affirmed so 
much ; and, secondly, the wisdom of all nations had 
provided laws against such persons, which is an ar- 
gument of their confidence of such a crime.' Sir 
Thomas Browne, who was a great physician, as well 
as a great writer, was called as a witness, and swore 
*that he was clearly of opinion that the persons were 
bewitched.' " 

Here is a terrible story, perfectly well authenti- 
cated, taken from the official report of the proceedings 
by an English historian : '' Towards the end of 1593 
there was trouble in the family of the Earl of Ork- 
ney. His brother laid a plot to murder him, and 
was said to have sought the help of a notorious witch 
called Alison Balfour. When Alison Balfour's life 
was looked into, no evidence could be found connect- 
ing her either with the particular oft'ense or with 
witchcraft in general ; but it was enough in these 
matters to be accused. She swore she was innocent ; 
but her guilt was only held to be aggravated by per- 
jury. She was tortured again and again. Her legs 



72 LIBRARY NOTES. 

were put in tlie caschilaws, — an iron frame which 
was gradually heated till it burned into the flesh, — 
but no confession could be wrung from her. The 
caschilaws failed utterly, and something else had to 
be tried. She had a husband, a son, and a daughter, 
a child seven years old. As her own sufferings did 
not work upon her, she might be touched, perhaps, 
by the sufferings of those who were dear to her. 
They were brought into court, and placed at her 
side, and the husband first placed in the ' long irons ' 
— some accursed instrument, I know not what. 
Still the devil did not yield. She bore this ; and 
her son was next operated on. The boy's legs were 
set in ' the boot,' — the iron boot you may have heard 
of. The wedges were driven in, which, when forced 
home, crushed the very bone and marrow. Fifty-seven 
mallet strokes were delivered upon the wedges. Yet 
this, too, failed. There was no confession yet. So, 
last of all, the little daughter was taken. There was 
a machine called the piniwinkies — a kind of thumb- 
screw, which brought blood from under the finger- 
nails, with a pain successfully terrible. These things 
were applied to the poor child's hands, and the moth- 
er's constancy broke down, and she said she would 
admit anything they wished. She confessed her 
witchcraft, — so tried, she would have confessed to 
the seven deadly sins, — and then she was burned, 
recalling her confession, and with her last breath 
protesting her innocence." 

'' In 1768 John Wesley prefaced an account of an 
apparition that had been related by a girl named 
Elizabeth Hobson, by some extremely remarkable 



EXTREMES. 73 

sentences on the subject. ' It is true, likewise,' he 
wrote, ' that the English in general, and, indeed, 
most of the men of learning in Europe, have given 
up all accounts of witches and apparitions as mere old 
wives' fables. I am sorry for it, and I willingly take 
this opportunity of entering my solemn protest 
against this violent compliment which so many that 
believe the Bible pay to those that do not believe it. 
I owe them no such service. I take knowledfje that 
these are at the bottom of the outcry which has been 
raised, and with such insolence spread through the 
land, in direct opposition, not only to the Bible, but 
to tlie suffrage of the wisest and best men in all ages 
and nations. Tliey well know (whether Christians 
know it or not) that the giving up of witchcraft is 
in effect giving up the Bible.' In the first year of 
this persecution. Cotton Mather wrote a history of the 
earliest of the trials. This history was introduced to 
the English public by Richard Baxter, who declared in 
his preface that 'that man must be a very obdurate 
Sadducee who would not believe it.' Not content 
with having thus given the weight of his great name 
to the superstition, Baxter in the following year pub- 
lished his treatise on The Certainty of the World of 
Spirits ; in which he collected, with great industry, 
an immense number of witch cases ; reverted in ex- 
tremely laudatory terms to Cotton Mather and his 
crusade ; and denounced, in unmeasured language, 
all who were skeptical upon the subject. This work 
appeared in 1691, when the panic in America had 
not yet reached its height; and being widely circu- 
lated there, is said to have contributed much to stim- 



74 LIBRARY NOTES. 

ulate the persecutions. The Pilgrim Fathers had 
brought to America the seeds of the persecution; 
and at the same time when it was rapidly fading in 
England, it flourished with fearful vigor in Massa- 
chusetts. Cotton Mather and Parris proclaimed the 
frequency of the crime; and, being warmly sup- 
ported by their brother divines, they succeeded in 
creating a panic through the whole country. A com- 
mission was issued. A judge named Stoughton, who 
appears to have been a perfect creature of the clergy, 
conducted the trials. Scourgings and tortures were 
added to the terrorism of the pulpit, and many con- 
fessions were obtained. The few who ventured to 
oppose the prosecutions were denounced as Sadducees 
and infidels. Multitudes were thrown into prison, 
others fled from the country, abandoning their prop- 
erty, and twenty-seven persons were executed. An 
old man of eighty was pressed to death — a horrible 
sentence, which was never afterwards executed in 
America. [Giles Corey was the name of the victim. 
He refused to plead, to save his property from con- 
fiscation. He urged the executioners, says Upham, 
in his History of Witchcraft and Salem Village, to 
increase the weight which was crushing him ; he told 
them that it was no use to expect him to yield ; that 
there could be but one way of ending the matter, and 
that they might as well pile on the stones. Calef 
says, that as his body yielded to the pressure, his 
tongue protruded from his mouth, and an official 
forced it back with his cane.] The ministers of Bos- 
ton and Charlestown drew up an address, warmly 
thankinoj the commissioners for their zeal, and ex- 



EXTREMES. 75 

pressing their hope that it would never be relaxed." 
*' There is no more painful reading than this," sa3"s 
Lowell, in his essay on Witchcraft, " except the 
trials of the witches themselves. These awaken, 
by turns, pity, indignation, disgust, and dread, — 
dread at the thought of what the human mind may 
be brought to believe not only probable, but proven. 
But it is well to be put upon our guard by lessons of 
this kind, for the wisest man is in some respects little 
better than a madman in a straight-waistcoat of 
habit, public opinion, prudence, or the like. Skep- 
ticism began at length to make itself felt, but it 
spread slowly, and was shy of proclaiming itself. 
The orthodox party was not backward to charge with 
sorcery whoever doubted their facts or pitied their 
victims. The mob, as it alwa3^s is, was orthodox. 
It was dangerous to doubt, it might be fatal to deny." 
" The spirit of party," quaintly says Bayle, in his 
Critical Dictionary, discoursing of Margaret, Queen 
of Navarre, " the attachment to a sect, and even zeal 
for orthodoxy, produce a kind of ferment in the 
humors of our body ; and hence the medium through 
which reason ought to behold these primitive ideas, is 
clouded and obscured. These are infirmities which 
will attend our reason, as long as it shall depend 
upon the ministry of organs. It is the same thing 
to it, as the low and middle region of the air, the 
seat of vapors and meteors. There are but very 
few persons who can elevate themselves above these 
clouds, and place themselves in a true serenity. If 
any one could do it, we must say of him what Virgil 
did of Daphnis ; — 



76 LIBRARY NOTES. 

' Daphnis, the cruest of Heaven, witli wondering eyes, 
Views in the milky-wny the starry skies ; 
And far beneath him, from the shining sphere, 
Beholds the moving clouds and rolling year.* 

And he would not have so niucli the appearance of 
a man, as of an immortal Being, placed upon a mount- 
ain above the region of wind and clouds. There is 
almost as much necessity for being above the passions 
to come to a knowledge of some kind of truths, as to 
act virtuously." " How limited is human reason," 
exclaims Disraeli, the younger, " the profoundest in- 
quirers are most conscious. We are not indebted to 
the reason of man for any of the great achievements 
which are the landmarks of human action and human 
progress. It was not reason that besieged Troy ; it 
was not reason that sent forth the Saracen from the 
desert to conquer the world ; that inspired the cru- 
sades ; that instituted the monastic orders ; it was not 
reason that produced the Jesuits ; above all, it was not 
reason that enacted the French Revolution. Man is 
only truly great when he acts from the passions ; never 
irresistible but when he appeals to the imagination. 
Even Moruion counts more votaries than Bentham." 
" Let us not dream," said Goethe, '' that reason can 
ever be popular. Passions, emotions, may be made 
popular ; but reason remains ever the property of an 
elect few." " It is not from reason and prudence that 
people marry," said Dr. Johnson, *' but from inclina- 
tion. A man is poor ; he thinks it cannot be worse, 
and so I '11 e'en marry Peggy." " If people," says 
Thackeray, " only made prudent marriages, what a 
stop to population there would be ! " 



III. 

DISGUISES. 

Man, poor fellow, would be a curious object for 
microscopic study. If it were possible to view him 
through powerful glasses, what humiliating resem- 
blances and infirmities would be discovered. He 
would be found to have innumerable tentacula and 
appendages, for protection and warning, and espe- 
cially to possess unconceived of apparatus for making 
his way in the dark, — necessities to him, it would 
appear, when further inspection of the creature had 
shown him to be — blind. At last, he finds himself 
obliged to rely upon such qualities and faculties as 
take the place of powers and eyes. Cowardly, he is 
gregarious, and will not live alone ; weak, he consorts 
with weakness, to acquire strength ; ignorant, he con- 
tributes the least bit of reason to the common stock 
of intelligence, and escapes responsibility. One of 
many, he has the protection of the mob ; embodying 
others' weaknesses, he is strong in the bundle of 
sticks ; joining his voice with the million, it is lost in 
the confusion of tongues. Attacked, he is fortified 
by his society ; down, he will rise again with his fel- 
lows ; -stupid with the rest, his shame is unfelt b}^ be- 
ing diffused. In any extremity, there is safety in 
counsel ; in the ranks, he cannot run ; in the crowd, 



78 LIBRARY NOTES. 

it were vain to think. Weary of stagnation or tired 
by the eddies, he goes with the current ; unable to 
stand an individual, he joins with a party ; a poor 
creature of God, he is afraid to trust Him on his 
Word, and flies to a sect with a creed for protection. 
In the wake of thought, he may be thoughtless ; vot- 
ing the ticket, he is a patriot ; a stiff bigot, there can 
be no doubt about his religion. He submits to be 
thought for as a child ; to be cared for as an invalid ; 
to be subordinated as an idiot. Unequal to a scheme 
of his own, he falls into one already devised for him ; 
without independent views, he relies upon his news- 
paper ; without implicit trust in God, he leans upon 
a broken reed in preference. Thus his business, his 
politics, his religion, are defined for him, and are of easy 
reference ; indeed it may be said he knows them by 
heart, so little there is of them. Of the laws of trade, 
political economy, essential Christianity, he may be 
as ignorant as a barbarian, at the same time be com- 
placent and respectable in his ignorance. Acting for 
himself, he would be set down as eccentric by his 
banker ; thinking for himself, he would be thought to 
be too uncertain to be trustworthy ; living virtuously, 
walking humbly, and trusting his Creator to take care 
of his creature, he would be an object' of suspicion, 
even if he escaped being called an infidel. His tailor 
determines the cut of his coat ; the street defines his 
manners and morals ; custom becomes his law, and 
compliance his gospel. Addison, in The Spectator, 
gives an account of a gentleman who determined to 
live and dress according to the rules of common sense, 
and was shut up in a lunatic asylum in consequence. 



DISGUISES. 79 

" Custom," says Carlyle, " doth make dotards of us 
all. Philosophy complains that custom has hood- 
winked us from the first ; that we do everything by 
custom, even believe by it ; that our very axioms, 
let us boast of free-thinking as we may, are oftenest 
simply such beliefs as we have never heard ques- 
tioned." " In this great society wide lying around 
us," says Emerson, " a critical analysis would find 
very few spontaneous actions. It is almost all custom 
and gross sense." Nevertheless, there are a few, and 
many more than appear. " Every man is conscious," 
says Lowell, " that he leads two lives, — the one 
trivial and ordinary, the other sacred and recluse ; one 
which he carries to society and the dinner-table, the 
other in which his youth and aspirations survive for 
him, and which is a confidence between himself and 
God. Both may be equally sincere, and there need 
be no contradiction between them, any more than in 
a healthy man between soul and body." But we play 
our parts so faithfully, not to say conscientiously, that 
often we have difficulty in placing ourselves, whether 
with the assumed or the natural. The little arts and 
artifices we thrive by, become essentially a part of us ; 
and in the jostle and conflict — the greater to devour 
the lesser and the lesser the least — we become in a 
manner stolid, and seem impelled to pursue the objects 
and ends which long habit has somehow convinced us 
nature particularly suited us to pursue. When an 
event occurs to attract attention to our follies or base- 
ness, it has not the effect to prompt repentance, but 
to excite our cunning, and set us to work to find ex- 
cuses, or to imagine some other course of conduct 



80 LIBRARY NOTES. 

which would have been more foolish or mischievous. 
" We keep on deceiving ourselves in regard to our 
faults, until we, at last, come to look upon them as 
virtues." Like Selwyn, the accomplished courtier and 
wit in the time of George III., we get to think even 
our vices necessities. After a night of elegant riot- 
ing and debauch, he tumbled out of his bed at noon 
the next day, and reeling with both hands upon his 
brain to a mirror in his apartment, gazed at himself 
and soliloquized : " I look and feel most villainously 
mean ; but it 's life — hang it, it 's life ! " Very readily 
our ethics are made to fortify our follies, and make 
them imposing and respectable. Infirmities and ca- 
lamities even have been made to serve an important 
use in the designs of men. " It was necessary," says 
a writer upon Mahomet, '' that the religion he pro- 
posed to establish should have a divine sanction ; and 
for this purpose he turned a calamity with which he 
was afflicted to his advantage. He was often subject 
to fits of epilepsy, a disease which those whom it 
afiflicts are desirous to conceal ; Mahomet gave out, 
therefore, that these fits were trances, into which he 
was miraculously thrown by God Almighty, during 
which he was instructed in his will, which he was 
commanded to publish to the world. By this strange 
story, and by leading a retired, abstemious, and aus- 
tere life, he easily acquired a character for superior 
sanctity among his acquaintances and neighbors. 
When he thought himself sufficiently fortified by the 
numbers and enthusiasm of his followers, he boldly 
declared himself a prophet, sent by God into the 
world, not only to teach his will, but to compel man- 



DISGUISES. 81 

kind to obey it." The world not only seems easily 
deceived, but seems to delight in deception. " If you 
wish to be powerful," said Home Tooke, " pretend 
to be powerful." If you wish to be considered wise, 
systematically pretend to be, and you will generally 
be acknowledged to be. We all know the influence of 
manner, as sometimes displayed by persons of great 
assumed personal dignity. Every neighborhood is 
afflicted with such characters. "Among those terms," 
says Whipple, indignantly, " which have long ceased 
to have any vital meaning, the word dignity deserves a 
disgraceful prominence. No word has fallen so read- 
ily into the designs of cant, imposture, and pretense ; 
none has played so well the part of verbal scarecrow, 
to frighten children of all ages and both sexes. It is 
at once the thinnest and most effective of all the cov- 
erings under which duncedom sneaks and skulks. 
Most of the men of dignity, who awe or bore their 
more genial brethren, are simply men who possess the 
art of passing off their insensibility for wisdom, their- 
dullness for depth, and of concealing imbecility of in- 
tellect under haughtiness of manner. Their success 
in this small game is one of the stereotyped satires 
upon mankind. Once strip from these pretenders, 
their stolen garments — once disconnect their show of 
dignity from their real meanness — and they would 
stand shivering and defenseless, — objects of the tears 
of pity, or targets for the arrows of scorn Man- 
ner triumphs over matter ; and throughout society,, 
politics, letters, and science, we are doomed to meet a 
swarm of dunces and wind-bags, disguised as gentle- 
men, statesmen, and scholars." When they open their 



82 LIBRARY NOTES. 

mouths, it is to expand themselves with a new inha- 
lation of emptiness, or to depreciate or belittle what 
they pretend is insignificant, because beyond their ca- 
pacity. They put up their heads and expectorate 
with a smirk}^ haughtiness, as if everything worth 
knowing were known to them, when a single sensa- 
tion of modesty would envelop their moony faces 
with blushes. Ever}^ one has seen such a character, 
— " an embodied tediousness, which society is apt not 
only to tolerate, but to worship ; a person who an- 
nounces the stale commonplaces of conversation with 
the awful precision of one bringing down to the val- 
leys of thought bright truths plucked on its summits ; 
who is so i^rofoundly deep and painfully solid, on the 
weather, or some nothing of the day ; who is inex- 
pressibly shocked if your eternal gratitude does not 
repay him for the trite information he consumed your 
hour in imparting ; and who, if you insinuate that 
this calm, contented, imperturbable stupidity is prey- 
ing upon your patience, instantly stands upon his dig- 
nity, and puts on a face." " A certain nobleman, 
some years ago," says Bulwer, in his Caxtons, " was 
conspicuous for his success in the world. He had 
been employed in the highest situations, at home and 
abroad, without one discoverable reason for his selec- 
tion, and without justifying the selection by one proof 
of administrative ability. Yet at each appointment 
the public said, ' A great gain to the government ! 
Superior man ! ' And when from each oflGlce he passed 
away, or rather passed imperceptibly onward toward 
ofiices still more exalted, the public said, ' A great loss 
to the government ! Superior man ! ' He was the 



DISGUISES. 83 

most silent person I ever met. But when the first 
reasoners of the age would argue some knotty point 
in his presence, he would, from time to time, slightly 
elevate his eyebrows, gently shake his head, or, by a 
dexterous smile of significant complacency, impress 
on you the notion how easily he could set those bab- 
blers right if he would but condescend to give voice 
to the wisdom within him. I was very young when 
I first met this superior man ; and chancing on the 
next day to call on the late Lord Durham, I said, in 
the presumption of early j^ears, ' I passed six mortal 

hours last evening in company with Lord . I 

don't think there is much in him.' ' Good heavens ! ' 
cried Lord Durham, 'how did you find that out? Is 
it possible that he could have — talked ? ' " Cole- 
ridge speaks of a dignified man he once saw at a din- 
ner-table. " He listened to me," says the poet, '' and 
said nothing for a long time ; but he nodded his 
head, and I thought him intelligent. At length, to- 
ward the end of the dinner, some apple dumplings 
were placed on the table, and my man had no sooner 
seen them, than he burst forth with — ' Them 's the 
jockies for me ! ' I wish Spurzheim could have exam- 
ined the fellow's head." The Duke of Somerset is 
described as one of these dignified gentlemen. His 
second wife was one of the most beautiful women in 
England. She once suddenly threw her arms around 
his neck, and gave him a kiss which might have glad- 
dened the heart of an emperor. The duke, lifting 
his shoulders with an aristocratic square, slowly said, 
" Madam, my first wife was'a Howard, and she never 
would liave taken such a liberty ! " If it were prac- 



84 LIBKARY NOTES. 

ticable to expose the artifice and emptiness of such 
characters, the exhibition would be as amusing as the 
scene once unexpectedly presented on the stage of a 
theatre. The comedian, enveloped in a great india- 
rubber suit, expanded by air to give it the proper 
proportions to represent Falstaif, when just in the 
middle of one of the inimitable speeches of that in- 
imitable character, some wag of the stock insinuated 
a sharp-pointed instrument into the immense windful 
garment : immediately the great proportions of Fal- 
staff began to diminish, attended by an audible hiss- 
ing noise ; and before the discomposed actor, over- 
whelmed with the laughter of the uproarious audience, 
could retire from the stage, he had shrunk to an in- 
significant one hundred and fifty pounds avoirdupois, 
with his deceptive covering hanging about his gaunt 
limbs in voluminous folds ! Such persons will gen- 
erally be found with good moral habits — props they 
instinctively set up to sustain their pretenses. They 
know by intuition that an affectation of wisdom and 
greatness would be intolerable attended by vicious pro- 
pensities and practices, and they cultivate with system- 
atic carefulness all the forms of morality and virtue. 
They know that their good habits will always insure 
the respect of even those who detect and despise their 
emptiness. But they are never heard to claim any- 
thing on the score of superior virtue ; they demand 
to be known as Solons — as abridgments of all that 
is profound and wonderful known among men. Like 
the owl — that wise bird, sacred of old to Minerva — 
they make their pretensions respected by the most 
commendable propriety. Occasionally they may 



DISGUISES. 85 

waive their conventional virtue, and lapse a little, 
without suffering in their trade of deception, if only 
the frailty be one which is indulged by the rich or 
the great ; indeed it may advance them in proportion 
as they imitate their envied exemplars. Goldsmith, 
that sweet writer of pure Enghsh, of whom it has 
been said he never wrote a line which he could have 
wished to blot, relates this in his Citizen of the World : 
" The Russians, who trade with the Tartars of Koreki, 
carry thither a kind of mushrooms, which they ex- 
change for furs of squirrels, ermines, sables, and foxes. 
These mushrooms the rich Tartars lay up in large 
quantities for the winter ; and when a nobleman 
makes a mushroom-feast, all the neighbors around are 
invited. The mushrooms are prepared by boiling, 
by which the water acquires an intoxicating quality, 
and is the sort of drink which the Tartars prize be- 
yond all other. When the nobility and ladies are 
assembled, and the ceremonies usual between people 
of distinction over, the mushroom-broth goes freely 
round ; they laugh, talk double entendre, grow fud- 
dled, and become excellent company. The poorer 
sort, who love mushroom-broth to distraction as well 
as the rich, but cannot aifoi-d it at the first hand, post 
themselves on these occasions round the huts of the 
rich, and watch the opportunity of the ladies and gen- 
tlemen as they come down to pass their liquor ; and 
holding a wooden bowl, catch the delicious fluid, very 
little altered by filtration, being still strongly tinctured 
with the intoxicating quality. Of this they drink 
with the utmost satisfaction, and thus they get as 
drunk and jovial as their betters." 



86 LIBRARY NOTES. 

The absorbing desire for wealth — " that bad 
thing, gold," that '' buj^s all things good" — like 
ambition, " often puts men upon doing the meanest 
offices : as climbing is performed in the same posture 
with creeping." Almost every act may be a lie 
against the thought or motive which prompted it. 
The great aim of the mere money-getter — to get 
and get forever — involves him in false pretense and 
practical falsehood. He advises to inveigle ; he con- 
doles and sympathizes to ruin. He talks of liberal- 
ity, and never gives. He depreciates money and the 
love of it, at the same time glows and dimples with 
the consciousness of his possessions. He calls life a 
humbug and muck, and proves it by a hypocritical 
exhibit of his gains. He puts a penny in the urn of 
poverty, and sees clearly how he will get a shilhng 
out. He whines for wretchedness, forgetting the 
number he has made wretched. He gives to religion, 
and plunders her devotees. He hires an expensive 
pew near the pulpit, and cheats his woodsawyer and 
washer-woman. He builds costly churches with tall 
steeples, and, writing the Almighty in his list of debt- 
ors, formally bargains admission to heaven. " He 
falls down and worships the god of this world, but 
will have neither its pomps, its vanities, nor its pleas- 
ures, for his trouble. He begins to accumulate treas- 
ure as a mean to happiness, and by a common but 
morbid association, he continues to accumulate it as 
an end. He lives poor to die rich, and is the mere 
jailer of his house, and the turnkey of his wealth. 
Impoverished by his gold, he slaves harder to imprison 
it in his chest, than his brother-slave to liberate it 



DISGUISES. 87 

from the mine." " Foote, in endeavoring to express 
the microscopic niggardliness of a miser of his ac- 
quaintance, expressed a belief that he would be will- 
ing to take the beam out of his own eye if he knew 
he could sell the timber. Doubtless one source of 
the miser's insane covetousness and parsimony is the 
tormenting fear of dying a beggar — that ' fine hor- 
ror of poverty,' according to Lamb, ' by which he is 
not content to keep want from the door, or at arm's- 
length, but he places it, by heaping wealth upon 
wealth, at a sublime distance.' " (" All the argu- 
ments which are brought to represent poverty as no 
evil," impatiently exclaimed Dr. Johnson, " show it 
to be evidently a great evil. You never find people 
laboring to convince you that you may live very hap- 
pily upon a plentiful fortune. So you hear people 
talking how miserable a king must be ; and yet they 
all wish to be in his place.") The hoarding habits of 
the miser remind one of a device of American boat- 
men, at an earl 3^ day, before the steamboat was in- 
vented, and when the forest was infested with red 
men and robbers. Receiving specie at New Orleans 
for their produce, they deposited it in a wet buckskin 
belt, of sufficient length to surround the body, which, as 
it dried, contracted and shrunk round the coin, till no 
amount of shaking would cause it to jingle. So may 
the heart and soul of the avaricious man shrink round 
his little heap of gold, until all health}^ circulation 
ceases, and his heart never jingles with a genuine, 
generous, manly impulse. Disraeli, in his Curios- 
ities, gives an interesting philosophical sketch of Aud- 
ley, — the great Audley, as he was called in his time, 



88 LIBRARY NOTES. 

— who concentrated all the powers of a vigorous in- 
tellect in the accumulation of wealth. He lived in 
England in the beginning of the seventeenth century, 
through the reigns of James I. and Charles I., and, 
beginning life with almost nothing, died worth four 
hundred thousand pounds sterling. He " lived to 
view his mortgages, his statutes, and his judgments 
so numerous, that it was observed, his papers would 
have made a good map of England. This philo- 
sophical usurer never pressed hard for his debts ; like 
the fowler, he never shook his nets lest he might 
startle, satisfied to have them, without appearing to 
hold them. With great fondness he compared his 
' bonds to infants, which battle best by sleeping.' To 
battle is to be nourished, a term still retained at the 
University of Oxford. His familiar companions were 
all subordinate actors in the great piece he was per- 
forming ; he too had his part in the scene. When 
not taken by surprise, on his table usually laid open 
a great Bible, with Bishop Andrews' folio Sermons, 
which often gave him an opportunity of railing at 
the covetousness of the clergy ! declaring their re- 
ligion was a ' mere preach,' and that ' the time would 
never be well till we had Queen Elizabeth's Prot- 
estants again in fashion.' He was aware of all the 
reasons arising out of a population beyond the means 
of subsistence, and dreaded an inundation of man, 
spreading like the spawn of a cod. Hence he con- 
sidered marriage, with a modern political economist, 
as very dangerous ; bitterly censuring the clergy, 
whose children, he said, never thrived, and whose 
widows were left destitute. An apostolic life, ac- 



DISGUISES. 89 

cording to Audley, required only books, meat, and 
drink, to be had for fifty pounds a year ! Celibacy, 
voluntary poverty, and all the mortifications of a 
primitive Christian, were the virtues practiced by 
this Puritan among his money-bags. Audley's was 
that worldly wisdom which derives all its strength 
from the weaknesses of mankind. Everything was 
to be obtained by stratagem, and it was his maxim, 
that to grasp our object the faster, we must go a little 
round about it. His life is said to have been one of 
intricacies and mysteries, using indirect means in all 
things ; but if he walked in a labyrinth, it was to 
bewilder others ; for the clew was still in his own 
hand; all he sought was that his designs should not 
be discovered in his actions. His word, we are told, 
was his bond ; his hour was punctual ; and his opin- 
ions were compressed and weighty ; but if he was 
true to his bond-word, it was only a part of the sys- 
tem to give facility to the carrying on of his trade, 
for he was not strict to his honor ; the pride of vic- 
tory, as well as the passion for acquisition, combined 
in the character of Audley, as in more tremendous 
conquerors. In the course of time he purchased a 
position in the 'court of wards,' which enabled him 
to plunder the estates of deceased persons and minors. 
When asked the value of this new office, he replied 
that ' it might be worth some thousands of pounds 
to him who after his death would go instantly to 
heaven ; twice as much to him who would go to pur- 
gatory, and nobody knows what to him who would 
adventure to go to hell.' " What he thought of a 
venture to the latter place, his four hundred thousand 
pounds must speak. 



90 LIBRARY NOTES. 

Did you ever read that remarkable out-of-the-way 
paper of Lamb's, the Remmiscences of Juke Jud- 
kins, Esq., of Birmingham? It is a nice, micro- 
scopic, philosophic study and analysis of meanness, — 
as common, we dare say, in this world, as avarice, — 
and will make us wonder that ordinary gifts and 
traits can be so perverted and belittled by debasing 
uses. All that is good of humanity was once united 
with Divinity, and made the best character that ever 
existed on earth. HumiHating it would be, if not 
impious, to imagine how much worse might be the 
devil if he would adopt the bestial qualities and 
worse than Satanic traits that men are constantly ex- 
posing and cultivating in their relations with one 
another. '' I was always," says Juke, " my father's 
favorite. He took a delight, to the very last, in re- 
counting the little sagacious tricks and innocent 
artifices of my childhood. One manifestation thereof 
I never heard him repeat without tears of joy trick- 
ling down his cheeks. It seems that when I quitted 
the parental roof (August 27, 1788), being then six 
years and not quite a month old, to proceed to the 
Free School at Warwick, where my father was a sort 
of trustee, my mother — as mothers are usually provi- 
dent on these occasions — had stuffed the pocket of 
the coach, which was to convey me and six more 
children of my own growth that were going to be 
entered along with me at the same seminary, with a 
prodigious quantity of gingerbread, which I remem- 
ber my father said was more than was needed : and 
so indeed it was ; for, if I had been to eat it all my- 
self, it would have got stale and mouldy before it had 



DISGUISES. 91 

been half spent. The consideration whereof set me 
upon my contrivances liow I might secure to myself 
as much of the gingerbread as would keep good for 
the next two or three days, and yet none of the rest 
in manner be wasted. I had a little pair of pocket 
compasses, which I usually carried about me for the 
purpose of making draughts and measurements, at 
"which I was always very ingenious, of the various 
engines and mechanical inventions in which such a 
town as Birmingliam abounded. By the means of 
these, and a small penknife which my father had 
given me, I cut out the one half of the cake, calcu- 
lating that the remainder would reasonably serve my 
turn ; and subdividing it into many little slices, 
which were curious to see for the neatness and nice- 
ness of their proportion, I sold it out in so many 
pennyworths to my young companions as served us 
all the way to Warwick, which is a distance of some 
twenty miles from this town ; and very merry, I as- 
sure you, we made ourselves with it, feasting all the 
way. By this honest stratagem, I put double the 
prime cost of the gingerbread into my purse, and se- 
cured as much as I thought would keep good and 
moist for my next two or three days' eating. When 
I told this to my parents on their first visit to me at 
Warwick, m}^ father (good man) patted me on the 
cheek, and stroked my head, and seemed as if he 
could never make enough of me ; but my mother un- 
accountably burst into tears, and said ' it was a very 
niggardly action,' or some such expression, and that 
' she would rather it would please God to take me ' — 
meaning, God help me, that I should die — ' than 



92 LIBRARY NOTES. 

that slie should live to see me grow up a 7nean man;^ 
which shows the difference of parent from parent, 
and how some mothers are more harsh and intolerant 
to their children than some fathers ; when we might 
expect the contrary. My father, however, loaded me 
with presents from that time, which made me the 
envy of my school-fellows. As I felt this growing 
disposition in them, I naturally sought to avert it by 
all the means in my power ; and from that time I 
used to eat my little packages of fruit, and other 
nice things, in a corner, so privately that I was 
never found out. Once, I remember, I had a huge 
apple sent me, of that sort which they call cats'- 
heads. I concealed this all day under my pillow ; 
and at night, but not before I had ascertained that 
my bed-fellow was sound asleep, — which I did by 
pinching him rather smartly two or three times, 
which he seemed to perceive no more than a dead 
person, though once or twice he made a motion as he 
would turn, which frightened me, — I say, when I 
had made all sure, I fell to work upon my apple ; and, 
though it was as big as an ordinary man's two fists, I 
made shift to get through before it was time to get 
up. And a more delicious feast I never made; 
thinking all night what a good parent I had (I mean 
my father), to send me so many nice things, when 
the poor lad that lay by me had no parent or friend 
in the world to send him anything nice ; and, think- 
ing of his desolate condition, I munched and munched 
as silently as I could, that I might not set him 
a-longing if he overheard me. And yet, for all this 
considerateness and attention to other people's feel- 



DISGUISES. 93 

ings, I was never much a favorite witli my scliool- 
fellows ; which I have often wondered at, seeing that 
I never defrauded any one of them of the vakie of a 
half-penny, or told stories of them to their master, as 
some little lying boys would do, but was ready to do 
any of them all the services in my power that were 
consistent with my own well-doing. I think nobody 
can be expected to go further than that." Juke, in 
the course of time, was engaged to be married to a 
maiden named Cleora. Hear him relate the circum- 
stance that broke off the engagement: "I was 
never," he says, " much given to theatrical entertain- 
ments ; that is, at no turn of my life was I ever what 
they call a regular play-goer ; but on some occasion 
of a benefit-night, which was expected to be very 
productive, and indeed turned out so, Cleora ex- 
pressing a desire to be present, I could do no less 
than offer, as I did very willingly, to squire her and 
her mother to the pit. At that time, it was not cus- 
tomary in our town for tradesfolk, except some of the 
very topping ones, to sit, as they now do, in the 
boxes. At the time appointed, I waited upon the 
ladies, who had brought with them a young man, a 
distant relation, whom it seems they had invited to 
be of the party. This a little disconcerted me, as I 
had about me barely silver enough to pay for our 
three selves at the door, and did not 'at first know 
that their relation had proposed paying for himself. 
However, to do the young man justice, he not only 
paid for himself but for the old lady besides ; leaving 
me only to pay for two, as it were. In our passage 
to the theatre, the notice of Cleora was attracted to 



94 LIBRARY NOTES. 

some orange wenches that stood about the doors vend- 
ing their commodities. She was leaning on my arm ; 
and I could feel her every now and then giving me a 
nudge, as it is called, which I afterwards discovered 
were hints that I should buy some oranges. It 
seems it is a custom at Birmingham, and perhaps in 
other places, when a gentleman treats ladies to the 
play, — especially when a full night is expected, and 
that the house will be inconveniently warm, — to pro- 
vide them with this kind of fruit, oranges being es- 
teemed for their cooling property. But how could I 
guess at that, never having treated ladies to a play 
before, and being, as 1 said, quite a novice in these 
kind of entertainments ? At last, she spoke plain 
out, and begged that I would buy some of ' those 
oranges,' pointing to a particular barrow. But, 
when I came to examine the fruit, I did not think the 
quality of it was answerable to the price. In this 
way, I handled several baskets of them ; but some- 
thing in them all displeased me. Sovne had thin 
rinds, and some were plainly over-ripe, which is as 
great a fault as not being ripe enough ; and I could 
not (what they call) make a bargain. While I 
stood haggling with the women, secretly determining 
to put off my purchase till I should get within the 
theatre, where I expected we should have better 
choice, the young man, the cousin (who it seems, had 
left us without my missing him), came running to 
us with his pockets stuffed out with oranges, inside 
and out, as they say. It seems, not liking the look 
of the barrow-fruit any more than myself, he had 
slipped away to an eminent fruiterer's, about three 



DISGUISES. 95 

doors distant, which I never had the sense to think 
of, and had laid out a matter of two shillings in some 
of the best St. Michael's, I think, I ever tasted. 
What a little hinge, as I said before, the most im- 
portant affairs in life may turn upon ! The mere in- 
advertence to the fact that there was an eminent 
fruiterer's within three doors of us, though we had 
just passed it without the thought once occurring to 
me, which he had taken advantage of, lost me the 
affection of my Cleora. From that time she visibly 
cooled towards me, and her partiality was as visibly 
transferred to this cousin. I was long unable to ac- 
count for this change in her behavior ; when one day, 
accidentally discoursing of oranges to my mother, 
alone, she let drop a sort of reproach to me, as if I 
had offended Cleora by my iiearness^ as she called it, 
that evening. Even now, when Cleora has been 
wedded some j^ears to that same officious relation, as 
I may call him, I can hardly be persuaded that such 
a trifle could have been the motive to her incon- 
stancy ; for could she suppose that I would sacrifice 
my dearest hopes in her to the paltry sum of two 
shillings, when I was going to treat her to the play, 
and her mother too (an expense of more than four 
times that amount), if the young man had not inter- 
fered to pay for the latter, as I mentioned ? Bat the 
caprices of the sex are past finding out ; and I begin 
to think my mother was in the right ; for doubtless 
women know' women better than we can pretend to 
know them." 

Juke w^ould have made a good tradesman under 
the rules laid down by De Foe : " A tradesman be- 



96 LIBRARY NOTES. 

hind his counter must have no flesh and blood about 
him, no passions, no resentment ; he must never be 
angry, no, not so much as seem to be so, if a cus- 
tomer tumbles him five hundred pounds' worth of 
goods, and scarce bids money for anything ; nay, 
though they really come to his shop with no intent 
to buy, as many do, only to see what is to be sold, 
and though he knows they cannot be better pleased 
than they are at some other shop where they intend 
to buy, 't is all one ; the tradesman must take it ; he 
must place it to the account of his calling, that 't is 
his business to be ill-used and resent nothing. I 
could give you many examples, how and in what 
manner a shopkeeper is to behave himself in the 
way of business ; what impertinences, what taunts, 
flouts, and ridiculous things, he must bear in his 
trade; and must not show the least return, or the 
least signal of disgust ; he must have no passions, 
no fire in his temper ; he must be all soft and 
smooth ; nay, if his real temper be naturally fiery 
and hot, he must show none of it in his shop ; he 
must be a perfect, complete hypocrite, if he would 
be a complete tradesman. It is true, natural tem- 
pers are not to be always counterfeited: the man 
cannot easily be a lamb in his shop, and a lion in 
himself ; but, let it be easy or hard, it must be done, 
and is done. There are men who have by custom and 
usage brought themselves to it, that nothing could 
be meeker and milder than they when behind the 
counter, and yet nothing be more furious and raging 
in every other part of life ; nay, the provocations they 
have met with in their shops have so irritated their 



DISGUISES. 97 

rage, that they would go up-stairs from their shop, 
and fall into frenzies, and a kind of madness, and 
beat their heads against the wall, and perhaps mis- 
chief themselves, if not prevented, till the violence 
of it had gotten vent ; and the passions abate and 
cool. I heard once of a shop-keeper that behaved 
himself thus to such an extreme that, when he was 
provoked by the impertinence of the customers be- 
yond what his temper could bear, he would go up- 
stairs and beat his wife, kick his children about like 
dogs, and be as furious for two or three minutes as a 
man chained down in Bedlam ; and again, when that 
heat was over, would sit down and cry faster than 
the children he had abused ; and, after the fit, he 
would go down into the shop again, and be as hum- 
ble, as courteous, and as calm, as any man whatever ; 
so absolute a government of his passions had he in 
the shop, and so little out of it : in the shop, a soul- 
less animal that would resent nothing ; and in the 
family, a madman : in the shop, meek like a lamb ; 
but in the family, outrageous, like a Libyan lion. 
The sum of the matter is, it is necessary for a trades- 
man to subject himself, by all the ways possible, to 
his business ; his customers are to be his idols : so far 
as he may worship idols by allowance, he is to bow 
down to them, and worship them ; at least, he is not 
in any way to displease them, or show any disgust or 
distaste, whatever they may say or do. The bottom 
of all is that he is intending to get money by them ; 
and it is not for him that gets money to offer the 
least inconvenience to them by whom he gets it : he 
is to consider that, as Solomon says, ' the borrower is 

7 



98 LIBRARY NOTES. 

servant of tlie lender ; ' so the seller is servant to the 
buyer." 

Poor George Dyer " commenced life, after a course 
of hard study, in the ' House of Pure Emanuel,' as 
usher to a knavish, fanatic school-master, at a salary 
of eight pounds per annum, with board and lodging. 
Of this poor stipend he never received above half in 
all the laborious years he served this man. He tells 
a pleasant anecdote, that when poverty, staring out 
at his ragged knees, has sometimes compelled him, 
against the modesty of his nature, to hint at arrears, 
the school-master would take no immediate notice ; 
but after supper, when the school was called together 
to even-song, he would never fail to introduce some 
instructive homily against riches, and the corruption 
of the heart occasioned through the desire of them, 
ending with, ' Lord, keep thy servants, above all 
things, from the heinous sin of avarice. Having 
food and raiment, let us therewithal be content. 
Give me Agur's wish,' — and the like, — which, to 
the little auditory, sounded like a doctrine full of 
Christian prudence and simplicity, but to poor Dyer 
was a receipt in full for that quarter's demands at 
least.'" 

" The late grand duke," said Goethe to Ecker- 
mann, " was very partial to Merck, so much so that 
he once became his security for a debt of four thou- 
sand dollars. Very soon Merck, to our surprise, gave 
him back his bond. As Merck's circumstances were 
not improved, we could not divine how he had been 
able to do this. When I saw him again, he ex- 
plained the enigma thus : ' The duke,' said he, ' is 



DISGUISES. 99 

an excellent, generous man, wlio trusts and helps men 
whenever he can. So I thought to myself. Now if 
you cozen him out of his money, that will prejudice 
a thousand others ; for he will lose his precious trust- 
fulness, and many unfortunate but worthy men will 
suffer, because one was worthless. So I made a spec- 
ulation, and borrowed the money from a scoundrel, 
whom it will be no matter if I do cheat ; but if I 
had not paid our good lord, the duke, it would have 
been a pity.' " 

"• The greatest pleasure I know," said Lamb, " is 
to do a good action by stealth, and to have it found 
out by accident." 



IV. 

STANDARDS. 

At a glance, it would appear that as a rule all men 
think all men imperfect but themselves. It follows, 
therefore, that all would reform all but themselves. 
But if every man's standard of excellence could be 
accounted for, what a melancholy history of human 
frailties and follies might be had. What sad curiosi- 
ties, perhaps, would be our pet virtues — offspring, 
alas, too often, of sated appetites, spent passions, hair- 
breadth escapes, and disappointed hopes. Knowing 
all, with what wondrous pity must God hear our poor 
prayers. To seek perfect virtue or contentment " is 
as hopeless as to try to recover a lost limb. Those 
only have it who never have thought about it. The 
moment we feel that we wish for it, we may be certain 
that it is gone forever." " To know how cherries and 
strawberries taste, you must ask the children and the 
birds." 

"All things," says Emerson, "work exactly accord- 
ing to their quality, and according to their quantity ; 
attempt nothing they cannot do, except man." He 
ventures " to say that what is bad is bad," and finds 
himself " at war with all the world." " Do not be so vain 
of your one objection. Do you think there is only one ? 
Alas, my good friend, there is no part of society or of 



STANDARDS. 101 

life better than any other part. All our things are 
right and wrong together. The wave of evil washes 
all alike." " Probably there never was," says De 
Quincey, " one thought, from the foundation of the 
earth, that has passed through the mind of man, 
which did not offer some blemish, some sorrowful 
shadow of pollution, when it came up for review 
before a heavenly tribunal; that is, supposing it a 
thought entangled at all with human interests or 
human passions." " All the progress which we have 
really made," says a writer in Blackwood, "and all 
the additional and fictitious progress which exists in 
our imagination, prompts us to the false idea that 
there is a remedy for everything, and that no pain is 
inevitable. But there are pains which are inevitable 
in spite of philosophy, and conflicting claims to which 
Solomon himself could do no justice. We are not 
complete syllogisms, to be kept in balance by intel- 
lectual regulations, we human creatures. We are of 
all things and creatures in the world the most incom- 
plete ; and there are conditions of our warfare, for the 
redress of which, in spite of all the expedients of 
social economy, every man and woman, thrown by 
whatever accident out of the course of nature, must 
be content to wait perhaps for years, perhaps for a 
life long, perhaps till the consummation of all things." 
" For a reasonable, voluntary being," says Sterling, 
" learning as he only can learn by experience, there 
will always be errors behind to mourn over, and a 
vista of unattainable good before, which inevitably 
lengthens as we advance." If we only could "grieve 
without affectation or imbecility, and journey on 
without turning aside or stopping." 



102 LIBRARY NOTES. 

"It is the conviction of the purest men, that the 
net amount of man and man does not much vary. 
Each is incomparably superior to his companion in 
some faculty. Each seems to have some compensa- 
tion yielded to him by his infirmity, and every 
hinderance operates as a concentration of his force." 
" Everything we do has its results. But the righfc 
and prudent does not always lead to good, or contrary 
measures to bad ; frequently the reverse takes place. 
Some time since," said Goethe, " I made a mistake in 
one of these transactions with booksellers, and was 
disturbed that I had done so. But, as circumstances 
turned out, it would have been very unfortunate if I 
had not made that very mistake. Such instances oc- 
cur frequently in life, and it is the observation of 
them which enables men of the world to go to work 
with such freedom and boldness." 

" When we see an eager assailant of one of these 
wrongs, a special reformer, we feel like asking him," 
says Emerson, " What right have you, sir, to your one 
virtue ? Is virtue piecemeal ? " " Your mode of hap- 
piness," said Coleridge, talking to such an one, " would 
make me miserable. To go about doing as much good 
as possible, to as many men as possible, is, indeed, an 
excellent object for a man to propose to himself ; but 
then, in order that you may not sacrifice the real good 
and happiness of others to your particular views, 
which may be quite different from your neighbors', 
you must do that good to others which the reason, 
common to all, pronounces to be good for all." " What 
I object," said Sydney Smith, "to Scotch philoso- 
phers in general is, that they reason upon man as 



STANDARDS. 103 

they would upon a divinity ; they pursue truth with- 
out caring if it be useful truth." Michel Angelo's 
great picture of the Last Judgment, in the Sistine 
Chapel, narrowly escaped from destruction by the 
monastic views of Paul IV. In the commencement 
of his reign, we are told, he conceived a notion of 
reforming that picture, in which so many academical 
figures offended his sense of propriety. This was 
communicated to Michel Angelo, who desired that the 
pope might be told " that what he wished was very 
little, and might be easily effected ; for if his holiness 
would only reform the opinions of mankind, the pict- 
ure would be reformed of itself." " You must have 
a genius for charity as well as for anything else. As 
for doing-good," says Thoreau, " that is one of the 
professions which are full. What good I do," says 
he, " in the common sense of that word, must be aside 
from my main path, and for the most part wholly 
unintended. Men say, practically, Begin where you 
are and such as you are, without aiming mainly 
to become of more worth, and with kindness afore- 
thought go about doing good. If I were to preach 
at all in this strain, I should say, rather. Set about 
being good. As if the sun should stop when he had 
kindled his fires up to the splendor of a moon, or a 
star of the sixth magnitude, and go about like a 
Robin Goodfellow, peeping in at every cottage win- 
dow, inspiring lunatics, and tainting meats, and 
making darkness visible, instead of steadily increas- 
ing his genial heat and beneficence till he is of such 
brightness that no mortal can look him in the face, 
and then, and in the mean while too, going about the 



104 LIBRARY NOTES. 

world in his own orbit, doing it good, or rather, as 
a truer philosophy has discovered, the world going 
about him, getting good. When Phaeton, wishing to 
prove his heavenly birth by his beneficence, had the 
sun's chariot but one day, and drove out of the beaten 
track, he burned several blocks of houses in the lower 
streets of heaven, and scorched the surface of the 
earth, and dried up every spring, and made the great 
Desert of Sahara, till at length Jupiter hurled him 
headlong to the earth with a thunderbolt, and the 
sun, through grief at his death, did not shine for a 
year." 

" There is no odor so bad," continues the same de- 
fiant radical, " as that which arises from goodness 
tainted. It is human, it is divine, carrion. If I 
knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my 
house with the conscious design of doing me good, 
I should run for my life, as from that dry and parch- 
ing wind of the African deserts called the simoom, 
which fills the mouth and nose and ears and eyes with 
dust till you are suffocated, for fear that I should get 
some of his good done to me, — some of its virus 
mingled with my blood. No; in this case I would 
rather suffer evil the natural way." 

An officer of the government called one day at the 
White House, and introduced a clerical friend to 
Lincoln. " Mr. President," said he, " allow me to 

present to you my friend, the Rev. Mr. F., of . 

Mr. F. has expressed a desire to see you and have 
some conversation with you,' and I am happy to be the 
means of introducing him." The president shook 
hands with Mr. F., and, desiring him to be seated, 



STANDARDS. 105 

took a seat himself. Then, his countenance having as- 
sumed an air of patient waiting, he said, " I am now 
ready to hear what you have to say." " Oh, bless 
you, sir," said Mr. F., " I have nothing special to say ; 
I merely called to pay my respects to you, and, as one 
of the million, to assure you of my hearty sympathy 
and support." " My dear sir," said the president, 
rising promptly, his face showing instant relief, and 
with both hands grasping that of his visitor, " I am 
very glad to see you, indeed. I thought you had 
come to preach to me ! " 

" My father," said the Attic Philosopher, " feared 
everything that had the appearance of a lesson. He 
used to say that virtue could make herself devoted 
friends, but she did not take pupils ; therefore he was 
not anxious to teach goodness ; he contented himself 
with sowing the seeds of it, certain that experience 
would make them grow." " The disease of men," said 
Mencius, " is this : that they neglect their own fields, 
and go to weed the fields of others, and that what 
they require from others is great, while what they lay 
upon themselves is light." 

" There are a thousand hacking at the branches of 
evil," says Thoreau, again, " to one who is striking at 
the root ; and it may be that he who bestows the 
largest amount of time and money on the needy is 
doing the most by his mode of life to produce that 
misery which he strives in vain to relieve. It is the 
pious slave-breeder devoting the proceeds of every 
tenth slave to buy a Sunday's liberty for the rest. 
.... The philanthropist too often surrounds man- 
kind with the remembrance of his own cast-off griefs 



106 LIBRARY NOTES. 

as an atmospliere, and calls it sympathy. We should 
impart our courage, and not our despair, our health 
and ease, and not our disease, and take care that 

this does not spread by contagion If anything 

ail a man, so that he does not perform his functions, 
if he have a pain in his bowels even, for that is the 
seat of sympathy, he forthwith sets about reforming 
— the world. Being a microcosm himself, he discov- 
ers — and it is a true discovery, and he is the man to 
make it — that the world has been eating green ap- 
ples ; to his eyes, in fact, the globe itself is a great 
green apple, which there is danger awful to think of 
that the children of men will nibble before it is ripe ; 
and straightway his drastic philanthropy seeks out 
the Esquimaux and the Patagonian, and embraces 
the populous Indian and Chinese villages ; and thus, 
by a few years of philanthropic activity, the powers 
in the mean while using him for their own ends, no 
doubt, he cures himself of his dyspepsia, the globe 
acquires a faint blush on one or both o^ its cheeks, as 
if it were beginning to be ripe, and life loses its 
crudity and is once more sweet and wholesome to 
live. I never dreamed of any enormity greater than 
I have committed. I never knew, and never shall 

know, a worse man than myself My excuse 

for not lecturing against the use of tobacco is that I 
never chewed it ; that is a penalty which reformed 
tobacco-chewers have to pay ; though there are things 
enough I have chewed, which I could lecture against. 
If you should ever be betrayed into any of these phi- 
lanthropies, do not let your left hand know what 
your right hand does, for it is not worth knowing. 



STANDARDS. 107 

Rescue the drowning, and tie your shoe-strings. 
Take your time, and set about some free labor." 

It has been observed that persons who are them- 
selves very pure are sometimes on that account blunt 
in their moral feelings. '' Right, too rigid, hardens 
into wrong " — even into cruelty sometimes. A friend 
of one of these malicious philanthropists dined with 
him one day, and afterward related an anecdote illus- 
trative of his character. While at the table, the chil- 
dren of the refining humanitarian, playing about the 
open door, were noisy and intractable, which caused 
him to speak to them impatiently. The disturbance, 
however, did not cease, and hearing one of the children 
cry out, he jumped spasmodically from the table, and 
demanded to know what was the matter. Upon be- 
ing informed that one had accidentally pinched the 
finger of another, he immediately seized the hand of 
the innocent offender, and placing the forefinger at 
the hinge of the door, deliberately closed it — crushing 
the poor child's finger as a punishment. There is 
another authentic story of a reformer who hired his 
children to go to bed without their supper as a means 
of preserving their health, and then stole their money 
back again to pay them for the next abstinence. 

" I have never known a trader in philanthropy,'* 
says Coleridge, " who was not wrong in head or heart 
somewhere or other. Individuals so distinguished 
are usually unhappy in their family relations : men 
not benevolent or beneficent to individuals, but al- 
most hostile to them ; yet lavishing money and labor 
and time on the race, the abstract notion." " This is 
always true of those men," says Hawthorne, in his 



108 LIBRARY NOTES. 

analysis of Hollingsworth, " who have surrendered 
themselves to an overruling power. It does not so 
much impel them from without, nor even operate as 
a motive power from within, but grows incorporate in 
all they think and feel, and finally converts them into 
little else save that one principle. When such begins 
±0 be the predicament, it is not cowardice, but wis- 
dom, to avoid these victims. They have no heart, no 
sympathy, no reason, no conscience. They will keep 
no friend, unless he make himself the mirror of their 
purpose ; they will smite and slay you, and trample 
your dead corpse under foot, all the more readily, if 
you take the first step with them, and cannot take 
the second, and the third, and every other step of 
their terribly straight path. They have an idol, to 
which they consecrate themselves high-priest, and 
deem it holy work to offer sacrifices of whatever is 
most precious ; and never once seem to suspect — so 
cunning has the devil been with them — that this false 
deity, in whose iron features, immitigable to all the 
rest of mankind, they see only benignity and love, is 
but a spectrum of the very priest himself, projected 
upon the surrounding darkness. And the higher and 
purer the original object, and the more unselfishly it 
may have been taken up, the slighter is the probabil- 
ity that they can be led to recognize the process by 
which godlike benevolence has been debased into all- 
devouring egotism." 

The same writer, in one of his minor productions, 
says, " When a good man has long devoted himself 
to a particular kind of beneficence, to one species of 
reform, he is apt to become narrowed into the limits 



STANDARDS. 109 

of the path wherein he treads, and to fancy that 
there is no other good to be done on earth but that 
self-same good to which he has put his hand, and in 
the very mode that best suits his own conceptions. 
All else is worthless. His scheme must be wrought 
out by the united strength of the whole world's stock 
of love, or the world is no longer worthy of a position 
in the universe. Moreover, powerful Truth, being 
the rich grape-juice expressed from the vineyard of 
the ages, has an intoxicating quality when imbibed 
by any save a powerful intellect, and often, as it 
were, impels the quaff er to quarrel in his cups." 

At a dinner-party one day, Madame de Stael said 
to Lady Mackintosh, after Godwin was gone, "• I am 
glad to have seen this man, — it is curious to see how 
naturally Jacobins become the advocates of tyrants." 

" I have often blamed myself," said Bos well, " for 
not feeling for others as sensibly as many say they 
do." " Sir," replied Johnson, " don't be duped by 
them any more. You will find these very feeling peo- 
ple are not very ready to do you good. They pa^ 
you hj feeling.^'' 

It has been observed that a very large proportion 
of the men who during the French Revolution proved 
themselves most absolutely indifferent to human suf- 
fering, were deeply attached to animals. Fournier 
was devoted to a squirrel, Couthon to a spaniel, 
Panis to two gold pheasants, Chaumette to an aviary, 
Marat kept doves. Bacon has noticed that the 
Turks, who are a most cruel people, are nevertheless 
conspicuous for their kindness to animals, and he 
mentions the instance of a Christian boy who was 



110 LIBRARY NOTES. 

nearly stoned to death for gagging a long-billed fowl. 
Abb^ Migne tells how one old Roman fed his oysters 
on his slaves ; how another put a slave to death that 
a curious friend might see what dying was like ; how 
Galen's mother tore and bit her waiting-women when 
she was in a passion with them. Caligula conferred 
the honor of priesthood upon his horse. " The day 
before the Circensian games," says Suetonius, " he 
used to send his soldiers to enjoin silence in the neigh- 
borhood, that the repose of the animal might not 
be disturbed. For this favorite, besides a marble sta- 
ble, an ivory manger, purple housings, and a jew- 
eled frontlet, he appointed a house, with a retinue of 
slaves and fine furniture, for the reception of such 
as were invited in the horse's name to sup with him. 
It is even said that he intended to make him consul." 
" In Egypt there are hospitals for superannuated cats, 
and the most loathsome insects are regarded with 
tenderness ; but human life is treated as if it were of 
no account, and human suffering scarcely elicits a 
care." 

Sydney Smith advised the bishop of New Zealand, 
previous to his departure, to have regard to the minor 
as well as to the more grave duties of his station — 
to be given to hospitality, and, in order to meet the 
tastes of his native guests, never to be without a 
smoked little boy in the bacon-rack, and a cold cler- 
gyman on the sideboard. " And as for myself, my 
lord," he concluded, "all I can say is, that when 
your new parishioners do eat you, I sincerely hope 
you will disagree with them." 

Lamb once told a droll story of an India-house 



STANDARDS. ' 111 

clerk accused of eating man's flesh, and remarked 
that " among cannibals those who rejected the favorite 
dish would be called misanthropists.'''' 

The eternal barbarisms must not be forgotten by 
the reformer while he is reforming the barbarians. 
The pagan Frisians, that illustrious northern Ger- 
man tribe, afterward known as the "free Frisi* 
ans," " whose name is synonymous with liberty, — 
nearest blood-relations of the Anglo-Saxon race," — 
struggled for centuries against the dominion of the 
Franks, and were only eventually subjugated by 
Charlemagne, who left them their name of free Fri- 
sians. " The Frisians," says their statute-book, "shall 
be free as long as the wind blows out of the clouds 
and the world stands." Radbod, their chief, was 
first overcome by Pepin the younger, and Pepin's 
bastard, Charles the Hammer, with his " tremen- 
dous blows, completed his father's work ; " he " drove 
the Frisian chief into submission, and even into Chris- 
tianity. A bishop's indiscretion, however, neutral- 
ized the apostolic blows " of the Christian conqueror. 
" The pagan Radbod had already immersed one of 
his royal legs in the baptismal font, when a thought 
struck him. ' Where are my dead forefathers at pres- 
ent?' he said, turning suddenly upon Bishop Wolf ran. 
' In hell, with all other unbelievers,' was the impru- 
dent answer. ' Mighty well,' replied Radbod, remov- 
ing his leg, * then will I rather feast with my ancestors 
in the halls of Woden, than dwell with your little 
starveling band of Christians in heaven.' Entreat- • 
ies and threats were unavailing. The Frisian de- 
clined positively a rite which was to cause an eter- 



112 LTBRAEY NOTES. 

nal separation from his buried kindred, and lie died 
as he had lived, a heathen." 

Tomochichi, chief of the Chickasaws, said to Wes- 
ley, " I will go up and speak to the wise men of the 
nation, and I hope they will hear. But we would 
not be made Christians as the Spaniards make Chris- 
tians ; we would be taught before we are baptized." 
He felt the want unconsciously acknowledged by the 
King of Siam, spoken of by John Locke in his chap- 
ter on Probability. A Dutch ambassador, when en- 
tertaining the king with the peculiarities of Holland, 
amongst other things told the sovereign that the 
water in Holland would sometimes in cold weather 
be so hard that men walked upon it, and that it 
would bear an elephant if he were there. To which 
the king replied, "Hitherto I have believed the 
strange things you have told me, because I looked 
upon you as a sober, fair man, but now I am sure 
you lie." But Tomochichi had an eye that saw the 
faults of tlie colonists, if he did not understand their 
religion. When urged to listen to the doctrines of 
Christianity, he keenly replied, " Why, these are 
Christians at Savannah ! these are Christians at Fred- 
erica! Christian much drunk! Christian beat men! 
Christian tell lies ! Devil Christian ! Me no Chris- 
tian ! " This recalls the pathetic story of the West 
Indian cazique, who, " at the stake, refused life, tem- 
poral or eternal, at the price of conversion, asking 
where he sh-ould go to live so happily. He was told 
— in heaven; and then he at once refused, on the 
ground that the whites would be there ; and he had 
rather live anywhere, or nowhere, than dwell with such 



STANDARDS. 113 

people as lie had found the white Christians to be." 
Almost the first word, says Dr. Medhurst, uttered 
by a Chinese, when anything is said concerning 
the excellence of Christianity, is, " Why do Chris- 
tians bring us opium, and bring it directly in defiance 
of our laws? The vile drug' has destroyed my son, 
has ruined my brother, and well-nigh led me to beg- 
gar my wife and children. Surely those who import 
such a deleterious substance, and injure me for the 
sake of gain, cannot wish me well, or be in possession 
of a religion better than my own. Go first and per- 
suade your own countrymen to relinquish their nefa- 
rious trafiic ; and give me a prescription to correct 
this vile habit, and then I will listen to your exhor- 
tations on the subject of Christianity!" Dr. Liv- 
ingstone says he found a tribe of men in the interior 
of Africa so pure and simple that they seemed to 
have no idea of untruthfulness and dishonesty until 
they were brought into contact with Asiatics and 
Europeans. Some of Dr. Kane's men, "while rest- 
ing at Kalutunah's tent, had appropriated certain 
fox-skins, boots, and sledges, which their condition 
seemed to require. The Esquimaux complained of 
the theft, and Dr. Itane, after a careful inquiry into 
the case, decided in their favor. He gave to each 
five needles, a file, and a stick of wood, and knives 
and other extras to Kalutunah and Shanghu, and 
after regaling them with a hearty supper, he returned 
the stolen goods, and tried to make them believe that 
liis people did not steal, but only took the articles to 
save their lives ! In imitation of this Arctic mo- 
rality the natives, on ^ their departure, carried off a 
8 



114 LIBRARY NOTES. 

few knives and forks, which they deemed as essen- 
tial to their happiness as the fox-dresses were to the 
white men." 

" Among the airy visions which had been gener- 
ated in the teeming brain of Coleridge," says a writer 
in the London Quarterly, " was the project of panti- 
socracy — a republic to be founded in the vdlds of 
America, of which the fundamental principles were 
an equality of rank and property, and where all who 
composed it were to be under the perpetual domin- 
ion of reason, virtue, and love. Southey was in- 
flamed by it and converted. Through it he saw a 
way out of all his troubles. There he would enjoy 
the felicity of living in a pure democracy, where he 
could sit unelbowed by kings and aristocrats. ' You,' 
he wrote to his brother Tom, ' are unpleasantly situ- 
ated, so is my mother, so were we all till this grand 
scheme of pantisocracy flashed upon our minds, and 
now all is perfectly delightful.' Coleridge, contented 
to have delivered a glowing description of Utopia, 
did nothing further, and departed on a pedestrian 
tour through Wales, where, as the ridiculous will 
sometimes mingle itself with the sublime, he feared 
he had caught the itch from an admiring democrat- 
ical auditor at an inn, who insisted upon shak- 
ing hands with him. Some time after, Southey, 
having tried his panacea upon a few select pantiso- 
cratic friends, wrote, ' There was a time when I 
believed in the persuadability of man, and had the 
mania of man-mending. Experience has taught me 
better. The ablest physician can do little in the 
great lazar-house of society. He acts the wisest part 
who retires from the contagion.' " 



STANDARDS. 115 

"Nature goes lier own way," said Goethe, "and 
all that to us seems an exception is really according 
to order." He quoted the saying of Rousseau, that 
you cannot hinder an earthquake by building a city 
near a burning mountain. Peter the Great, he said, 
repeated Amsterdam so dear to his youth, in locating 
St. Petersburg at the mouth of the Neva. The 
ground rises in the neighborhood, and the emperor 
could have had a city quite free from all the trouble 
arising from overflow if he had but gone a little 
higher up. An old shipmaster represented this to 
him, and prophesied that the people would be drowned 
every seventy years. There stood also an old tree, 
with various marks from times when the waters had 
risen to a great height. But all was in vain ; the 
emperor stood to his whim, and had the tree cut 
down, that it might not be witness against him! 
Sydney Smith said of a certain fanatical member of 
Parliament, that " he was losing his head. When he 
brings forward his Suckling Act, he will be consid- 
ered as quite mad. No woman to be allowed to 
suckle her own child without medical certificates. 
Three classes, viz., free-sucklers, half-sucklers, and 
spoon-meat mothers. Mothers, whose supply is un- 
certain, to suckle upon affidavit ! How is it possible 
that an act of Parliament can supply the place of 
nature and natural affection ?" 

" There is in nature," said Goethe to Soret, " an 
accessible and an inaccessible. Be careful to discrimi- 
nate between the two, be circumspect, and proceed 
with reverence." " The sight of a primitive phe- 
nomenon," he said to Eckermann, " is generally not 



116 LIBRARY NOTES. 

enough for people ; they think they must go still fur- 
ther ; and are thus like children who, after peeping 
into a mirror, turn it round directly to see what is on 
the other side." " When one," said he on another 
occasion, " has looked about him in the world long 
enough to see how the most judicious enterprises fre- 
quently fail, and the most absurd have the good fort- 
une to succeed, he becomes disinclined to give any 
one advice. At bottom, he who asks advice shows 
himself limited ; he who gives it gives also proof that 
he is presumptuous. If any one asks me for good 
advice, I say, I will give it, but only on condition that 

you will promise not to take it Much is said 

of aristocracy and democracy ; but the whole affair is 
simply this : in youth, when we either possess noth- 
ing, or know not how to value the tranquil possession 
of anything, we are democrats ; but when we, in a 
long life, have come to possess something of our own, 
we wish not only ourselves to be secure of it, but that 
our children and grandchildren should be secure of in- 
heriting it. Therefore, we always lean to aristoc- 
racy in our old age, whatever were our opinions in 
youth." 

Elliott, the Corn-Law Rhymer, being asked, "What 
is a communist?" answered, " One who has yearn- 
ings for equal division of unequal earnings. Idler or 
bungler, he is willing to fork out his penny and 
pocket your shilling." 

"Sir," said Johnson, " your levelers wish to level 
down as far as themselves ; but they cannot bear lev- 
eling up to themselves. They would all have some 
people under them ; why not then have some people 
above them ? " 



STANDARDS. 117 

Margaret Fuller, speaking of the greatest of Ger- 
man poets, says, " He believes more in man than 
men, effort than success, thought than action, nature 
than providence. He does not insist on my believing 
with him." 

" He who would help himself and others," says 
Emerson, " should not be a subject of irregular and 
interrupted impulses of virtue, but a continent, per- 
sisting, immovable person, — such as we have seen a 
few scattered up and down in time for the blessing of 
the world ; men who have in the gravity of their 
nature a quality which answers to the fly-wheel in a 
mill, which distributes the motion equally over all 
the wheels, and hinders it from falling unequally and 
suddenly in destructive shocks. It is better that joy 
should be spread over all the day in the form of 
strength, than that it should be concentrated into 
ecstasies, full of danger, and followed by reactions." 
"It only needs that a just man should walk in our 
streets, to make it appear how pitiful and inartificial 
a contrivance is our legislation. The man whose part 
is taken, and who does not wait for society in any- 
thing, has a power which society cannot choose but 
feel." 

What a character was Sir Isaac Newton. He is 
described as modest, candid, and affable, and without 
any of the eccentricities of genius, suiting himself to 
every company, and speaking of himself and others 
in such a manner that he was never even suspected of 
vanity. " But this," says Dr. Pemberton, " I imme- 
diately discovered in him, which at once both sur- 
prised and charmed me. Neither his extreme great 



118 LIBRARY NOTES. 

age, nor his universal reputation, had rendered him 
stiff in opinion, or in any degree elated." His mod- 
esty arose from the depth and extent of his knowl- 
edge, which showed him what a small portion of 
nature he had been able to examine, and how much 
remained to be explored in the same field in which he 
had himself labored. In a letter to Leibnitz, 1675, 
he observes, " I was so persecuted with discussions 
arising out of my theory of light, that I blamed my 
own imprudence for parting with so substantial a 
blessing as my quiet, to run after a shadow." Nearly 
a year after his complaint to Leibnitz, he uses the 
following remarkable expression in a communication 
to Oldenburg : " I see I have made myself a slave to 
philosophy ; but if I get free of Mr. Linus's busi- 
ness, I will resolutely bid adieu to it eternally, ex- 
cepting what I do for my private satisfaction, or 
leave to come out after me ; for I see a man must 
either resolve to put out nothing new, or to become a 
slave to defend it." His assistant and amanuensis 
for five years (Humphrey Newton) never heard him 
laugh but once in all that time : " 'T was upon occa- 
sion of asking a friend, to whom he had lent Euclid 
to read, what progress he had made in that author, 
and how he liked him. He answered by desiring to 
know what use and benefit in life that study would 
be to him. Upon which Sir Isaac was very merry." 
He was once disordered with pains at the stomach, 
which confined him for some days to his bed, but 
which he bore with a great deal of patience and mag- 
nanimity, seemingly indifferent either to live or to 
die. "He seeing me," said his assistant, "much con- 



STANDARDS. 119 

cerned at his illness, bid me not trouble myself ; ' For 
if I die,' said Sir Isaac, ' I shall leave you an estate,' 
which he then for the first time mentioned." Says 
Bishop Atterbury, " In the whole air of his face and 
make there was nothing of that penetrating sagacity 
which appears in his compositions. He had some- 
thing rather languid in his look and manner, which 
did not raise any great expectations in those who did 
not know him." When Pope expressed a wish for 
" some memoirs and character of Newton, as a pri- 
vate man," he did " not doubt that his life and man- 
ners would make as great a discovery of virtue and 
goodness and rectitude of heart, as his works have 
done of penetration and the utmost stretch of human 
knowledge." When Vigani told him " a loose story 
about a nun," he gave up his acquaintance ; and when 
Dr. Halley ventured to say anything disrespectful to 
religion, he invariably checked him with the remark, 
" I have studied these things, — you have not." 
When he was asked to take snuff or tobacco, he de- 
clined, remarking " that he would make no necessi- 
ties to himself." Bishop Burnet said that he " valued 
him for something still more valuable than all his 
philosophy, — for having the whitest soul he ever 
knew." 

Slowly and modestly the great in all things is de- 
veloped. " Though the mills of God grind slowly, 
yet they grind exceeding small." Look at the Neth- 
erlands. " Three great rivers — the Rhine, the 
Meuse, and the Scheldt — had deposited their slime 
for ages among the dunes and sand-banks heaved up 
by the ocean around their mouths. A delta was thus 



120 LIBRARY NOTES. 

formed, habitable at last for man. It was by nature 
a wide morass, in which oozy islands and savage for- 
ests were interspersed among lagoons and shallows ; a 
district lying partly below the level of the ocean at 
its higher tides, subject to constant overflow from the 
rivers, and to frequent and terrible inundations by 
the sea. Here, within a half submerged territory, a 
race of wretched ichthyophagi dwelt upon mounds, 
which they had raised, like beavers, above the almost 
fluid soil. Here, at a later day, the same race 
chained the tyrant Ocean and his mighty streams 
into subserviency, forcing them to fertilize, to render 
commodious, to cover with a beneficent net-work of 
veins and arteries, and to bind by watery highways, 
with the farthest ends of the world, a country disin- 
herited by nature of its rights. A region outcast of 
ocean and earth wrested at last from both domains 
their richest treasures. A race engaged for genera- 
tions in stubborn conflict with the angry elements 
was unconsciously educating itself for its great 
struggle with the still more savage despotism of 
man." 

In the central part of a range of the Andes, at an 
elevation of about seven thousand feet, on a bare 
slope, may be observed some snow-white projecting 
columns. These are petrified trees, eleven being 
silicified, and from thirty to forty converted into 
coarsely crystallized white calcareous spar. They are 
abruptly broken off, the upright stumps projecting a 
few feet above the ground. The trunks measured 
from three to five feet each in circumference. They 
stood a little way apart from each other, but the 



STANDARDS. 121 

whole formed one group. The volcanic sandstone in 
which the trees were imbedded, and from the lower 
part of which they must have sprung, had accumu- 
lated in successive thin layers around their trunks, 
and the stone yet retained the impression of the bark. 
" It required," says the eminent scientific man who 
visited the spot in 1835, " little geological practice 
to interpret the marvelous story which this scene at 
once unfolded. I saw the spot where a cluster of 
fine trees once reared their branches on the shores of 
the Atlantic, when that ocean, now driven back seven 
hundred miles, came to the foot of the Andes. I saw 
that they had sprung from a volcanic soil which had 
been raised above the level of the sea, and that sub- 
sequently this dry land, with its upright trees, had 
been let down into the depths of the ocean. In these 
depths, the formerly dry land was covered by sedi- 
mentary beds, and these again by enormous streams 
of submarine lava — one such mass attaining the 
thickness of a thousand feet; and these deluges of 
molten stone and aqueous deposits five times alter- 
nately had been spread out. The ocean which re- 
ceived such thick masses must have been profoundly 
deep ; but again the subterranean forces exerted 
themselves, and I now beheld the 'bed of that ocean, 
forming a chain of mountains more than seven thou- 
sand feet in height. Nor had those antagonist forces 
been dormant which are always at work, wearing 
down the surface of the land ; the great piles of 
strata had been intersected by many wide valleys, 
and the trees, now changed into silex, were exposed 
projecting from the volcanic soil, now changed into 



122 LIBRARY NOTES. 

rock, whence formerly, in a green and budding state, 
they had raised their lofty heads." 

" The world," said Goethe, " is not so framed that 
it can keep quiet ; the great are not so that they will 
not permit misuse of power ; the masses not so that, 
in hope of a gradual amelioration, they will keep 
tranquil in an inferior condition. Could we perfect 
human nature, we might expect perfection every- 
where ; but as it is, there will always be this waver- 
ing hither and thither ; one part must suffer while 
the other is at ease." " It is with human things," 
says Froude, " as it is with the great icebergs which 
drift southward out of the frozen seas. They swim 
two thirds under water, and one third above ; and so 
long as the equilibrium is sustained you would think 
that they were as stable as the rocks. But the sea 
water is warmer than the air. Hundreds of fathoms 
down, the tepid current washes the base of the berg. 
Silently in those far deeps the centre of gravity is 
changed ; and then, in a moment, with one vast roll, 
the enormous mass heaves over, and the crystal 
peaks which had been glancing so proudly in the 
sunhght are buried in the ocean forever." " The 
secret which you would fain keep, — as soon as you 
go abroad, lo ! there is one standing on the door-step 
to tell you the same." The revolution is all at once 
ripe, and the bottom is at the top again. Nobody 
and everybody is responsible. " It is seldom," says 
John Gait, in his life of Wolsey, " that any man can 
sway the current of national affairs ; but a wide and 
earnest system of action never fails to produce re- 
sults which resemble the preexpected effects of par- 



STANDARDS. 123 

ticular designs." At the gorgeous coronation of Na- 
poleon, some one asked the republican general Au- 
gereau whether anything was wanting to the splen- 
dor of the scene. '' Nothing," replied Augereau, 
" but the presence of the million of men who have 
died to do away with all this." 

You remember the value, to the cause of civil lib- 
erty and Christianity, of the accidental epithet of 
" beggars," applied to the three hundred nobles who 
petitioned Margaret of Parma for a stay of the 
edicts of Philip and the Inquisition, about to be ter- 
ribly executed upon the rebellious Protestants under 
the leadership of William of Orange. Motley, in 
his Dutch Republic, gives a vivid account of it. The 
duchess was agitated and irritated by the petition. 
" The Prince of Orange addressed a few words to 
the duchess, with the vieV of calming her irritation. 
He observed that the confederates were no seditious 
rebels, but loyal gentlemen, well-born, well con- 
nected, and of honorable character. They had been 
influenced, he said, by an honest desire to save their 
country from impending danger, — not by avarice or 
ambition. ' What, madam,' cried Berlaymont in a 
passion, ' is it possible that your highness can enter- 
tain fears of these beggars ? Is it not obvious what 
manner of men they are ? They have not had wisdom 
enough to manage their own estates, and are they now 
to teach the king and your highness how to govern the 
country ? By the living God, if my advice were 
taken, their petition should have a cudgel for a com- 
mentary, and we would make them go down the 
steps of the palace a great deal faster than they 



124 LIBRARY NOTES. 

mounted them ! ' Afterwards, as tlie three hmidred 
gentlemen and nobles passed by the house of Berlay- 
mont, that nobleman, standmg at his window in com- 
pany with Count Aremberg, repeated his jest : ' There 
go our fine beggars again. Look, I pray you, with 
what bravado they are passing before us ! ' ' They 
call us beggars,' said Brederode, to the three hundred 
banqueting with him in the Calemburg mansion on 
that famous April night. ' Let us accept the name. 
We will contend with the Inquisition, but remain 
loyal to the king, even till compelled to wear the beg- 
gar's sack.' He then beckoned to one of his pages, 
who brought him a leathern wallet, such as was worn 
at that day by professional mendicants, together with 
a large wooden bowl, which also formed part of their 
regular appurtenances. Brederode immediately hung 
the wallet round his neck, filled the bowl with wine, 
lifted it with both hands, and drained it at a draught. 
' Long live the beggars ! ' he cried, as he wiped his 
beard and set the bowl down. ' Long live the beg- 
gars ! ' Then for the first time from the lips of those 
reckless nobles rose the famous cry, which was so 
often to ring over land and sea, amid blazing cities, 
on blood-stained decks, through the smoke and car- 
nage of many a stricken field. The humor of Brede- 
rode was hailed with deafening shouts of applause. 
The count then threw the wallet round the neck of 
his nearest neighbor, and handed him the wooden 
bowl. Each guest, in turn, donned the mendicant's 
knapsack. Pushing aside his golden goblet, each 
filled the beggar's bowl to the brim, and drained it to 
the beggar's health. Roars of laughter and shouts 



STANDARDS. 125 

of ' Long live the beggars ! ' shook the walls of the 
stately mansion, as they were doomed never to shake 
again. The shibboleth was invented. The conjura- 
tion which they had been anxiously seeking was 
found. Their enemies had provided them with a 
spell which was to prove, in after days, potent enough 
to start a spirit from palace or hovel, forest or wave, 
as the deeds of the ' wild beggars,' the ' wood beggars,' 
and the ' beggars of the sea ' taught Philip at last to 
understand the nation which he had driven to mad- 
ness." 

" Johnny Appleseed," by which name Jonathan 
Chapman was known in every log-cabin from the 
Ohio River to the Northern Lakes, is an interesting 
character to dwell upon. Barefooted, and with 
scanty clothing, he traversed the wilderness for many 
years, planting appleseeds in the most favorable sit- 
uations. His self-sacrificing life made him a favorite 
with the frontier settlers — men, women, and espe- 
cially children ; even the savages treated him with 
kindness, and the rattlesnakes, it was said, hesitated 
to bite him. " During the war of 1812, when the 
frontier settlers were tortured and slaughtered by the 
savage allies of Great Britain, Johnny Appleseed 
continued his wanderings, and was never harmed by 
the roving bands of hostile Lidians. On many occa- 
sions the impunity with which he ranged the country 
enabled him to give the settlers warning of approach- 
ing danger, in time to allow them to take refuge in 
their block-houses before the savages could attack 
them. An informant refers to one of these instances, 
when the news of Hull's surrender came like a thun- 



126 LIBRARY NOTES. 

derbolt upon tlie frontier. Large bands of Indians 
and British were destroying everything before them, 
and murdering defenseless women and children, and 
even the block-houses were not always a sufficient 
protection. At this time Johnny traveled day and 
night, w^arning the people of the impending danger. 
He visited every cabin and delivered this message : 
' The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, and He hath 
anointed me to blow the trumpet in the wilderness, 
and sound an alarm in the forest ; for behold, the tribes 
of the heathen are round about your doors, and a de- 
vouring flame followeth after them ! ' The aged man 
who narrated this incident said that he could feel even 
then the thrill that was caused by this prophetic an- 
nouncement of the wild-looking herald of danger, who 
aroused the family on a bright moonlight midnight 
with his piercing cry. Refusing all offers of food, and 
denying himself a moment's rest, he traversed the 
border day and night until he had warned every set- 
tler of the impending peril. Johnny also served as 
colporteur, systematically leaving with the settlers 
chapters of certain religious books, and calling for 
them afterwards ; and was the first to engage in the 
work of protecting dumb brutes. He believed it to 
be a sin to kill any creature for food. No Brahman 
could be more concerned for the preservation of insect 
life, and the only occasion on which he destroyed a 
venomous reptile was a source of long regret, to which 
he could never refer without manifesting sadness. 
He had selected a suitable place for planting apple- 
seeds on a small prairie, and in order to prepare the 
ground, he was mowing the long grass, when he was 



STANDARDS. . « 

bitten by a rattlesnake. In describing ,the event lie 
sighed heavily, and said, ' Poor fellow, he only just 
touched me, when I, in the heat of my ungodly pas- 
sion, put the heel of my scythe in him, and went 
away. Some time afterwards I went back, and there 
lay the poor fellow, dead ! ' " " He was a man, after 
all," — Hawthorne might have exclaimed of him, too, 
— " his Maker's own truest image, a philanthropic 
man ! — not that steel engine of the devil's contriv- 
ance — a philanthropist ! " 

John Brown, when he was twelve years old, from 
seeing a negro slave of his own age cruelly beaten, be- 
gan to hate slavery and love the slaves so intensely 
as ''sometimes to raise the question. Is God their 
Father ? " At forty, " he conceived the idea of be- 
coming a liberator of the Southern slaves ; " at the 
same time " determined to let them know that they 
had friends, and prepared himself to lead them to 
liberty. From the moment that he formed this res- 
olution, he engaged in no business which he could 
not, without loss to his friends and family, wind up in 
fourteen days." His favorite texts of Scripture were, 
" Remember them that are in bonds as bound with 
them ; " " Wlioso stoppeth his ear at the cry of the 
poor, he also shall cry himself, but shall not be heard ;" 
" Whoso mocketh the poor reproacheth his Maker, 
and he that is glad at calamities shall not be unpun- 
ished ; " " Withhold not good from them to whom it 
is due*; when it is in the power of thine hand to do it." 
His favorite hymns were, " Blow ye the trumpet, 
blow ! " and " Why should we start and fear to die ? " 
" I asked him," said a child, " how he felt when he 



\ J LIBRARY NOTES. 

left tlie eleven slaves, taken from Missouri, safe in 
Canada ? His answer was, ' Lord, permit now thy 
servant to die in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy sal- 
vation. I could not brook the idea that any ill should 
befall them, or they be taken back to slavery. The 
arm of Jehovah protected us.' " " Upon one occasion, 
when one of the ex-governors of Kansas said to him 
that he was a marked man, and that the Missourians 
were determined, sooner or later, to take his scalp, the 
old man straightened himself up, with a glance of en- 
thusiasm and defiance in his gray eye. ' Sir,' said he, 
' the angel of the Lord will camp round about me.' " 
On leaving his family the first time he went to Kan- 
sas, he said, " If it is so painful for us to part, with 
the hope of meeting again, how dreadful must be the 
separation for life of hundreds of poor slaves." " He 
deliberately determined, twenty years before his at- 
tack upon Harper's Ferry," says Higginson, " that at 
some future period he would organize an armed party, 
go into a slave State, and liberate a large number 
of slaves. Soon after, surveying professionally in 
the mountains of Virginia, he chose the very ground 
for the purpose. He said ' God had established the 
Alleghany Mountains from the foundation of the 
world that they might one day be a refuge for fugi- 
tive slaves.' Visiting Europe afterward, he studied 
military strategy for this purpose, even making de- 
signs for a new style of forest fortifications, simple 
and ingenious, to be used by parties of fugitive %laves 
when brought to bay. He knew the ground, he knew 
his plans, he knew himself ; but where should he find 
his men ? Such men as he needed are not to he found 



STANDARDS. 129 

ordinarily; they must be reared. John Brown did 
not merely look for men, therefore ; he reared them 
in his sons. Mrs. Brown had been always the sharer 
of his plans. ' Her husband always believed,' she 
said, ' that he was to be an instrument in the hands 
of Providence, and she believed it too.' ' This plan 
had occupied his thoughts and prayers for twenty 
years.' ' Many a night he had lain awake and prayed 
concerning it.' " " He believed in human brother- 
hood, and in the God of Battles ; he admired Nat 
Turner, the negro patriot, equally with George 
Washington, the white American deliverer." " He 
secretly despised even the ablest antislavery orators. 
He could see ' no use in this talking,' he said. ' Talk 
is a national institution ; but it does no manner of 
good to the slave.' " The year before his attack, he 
uttered these sentences in conversation : " Nat Turner, 
with fifty men, held Virginia five weeks. The same 
number, well organized and armed, can shake the 
system out of the State." " Give a slave a pike, and 
you make him a man. Deprive him of the means of 
resistance, and you keep him down." " The land 
belongs to the bondsman. He has enriched it, and 
been robbed of its fruits." " Any resistance, how- 
ever bloody, is better than the system which makes 
every seventh woman a concubine." " A few men in 
the right, and knowing they are, can overturn a king. 
Twenty men in the Alleghanies could break slavery 
to pieces in two years." " When the bondsmen stand 
like men, the nation will respect them. It is neces- 
sary to teach them this." About the same time he 
said, in another conversation, "that it was nothing 



130 LIBRARY NOTES. 

to die in a good cause, but an eternal disgrace to sit 
still in the presence of the barbarities of American 
slavery." " Providence," said he, " has made me an 
actor, and slavery an outlaw." " Duty is the voice 
of God, and a man is neither worthy of a good home 
here, or a heaven, that is not willing to be in peril for 
a good cause." He scouted the idea of rest while he 
held " a commission direct from God Almighty to act 
against slavery." After his capture, and while he 
lay in blood upon the floor of the guard-house, he was 
asked by a bystander upon what principle he justified 
his acts ? " Upon the Golden Rule," he answered. 
" I pity the poor in bondage that have none to help 
them. That is why I am here ; it is not to gratify 
any personal animosity, or feeling of revenge, or vin- 
dictive spirit. It is my sympathy with the oppressed 
and the wronged, that are as good as you, and as pre- 
cious in the sight of God. I want you to understand, 
gentlemen, that I respect the rights of the poorest and 
weakest of the colored people, oppressed by the slave 
system, just as much as I do those of the most wealthy 
and powerful. That is the idea that has moved me, 
and that alone. We expected no reward except the 
satisfaction of endeavoring to do for those in distress — 
the greatly oppressed — as we would be done by. The 
cry of distress, of the oppressed, is my reason, and the 
only thing that prompted me to come here. I wish to 
say, furthermore, that you had better, all you people 
of the South, prepare ^^ourselves for a settlement of 
this question. It must come up for settlement sooner 
than you are prepared for it, and the sooner you com- 
mence that preparation, the better for you. You may 



STANDARDS. 131 

dispose of me very easily. I am nearly disposed of 
now; but this question is still to be settled — this 
negro question, I mean. The end of that is not yet." 
In his '' last speech," before sentence was passed upon 
him, he said, " This court acknowledges, as I sup- 
pose, the validity of the law of God. I see a book 
kissed here which I suppose to be the Bible, or, at 
least, the New Testament. That teaches me that all 
things ' whatsoever I would that men sli,ourd do unto 
me I should do even so to them.' It teaches me fur- 
ther, to ' remember them that are in bonds as bound 
with them.' I endeavored to act up to that instruc- 
tion. I say, I am yet too young to understand that 
God is any respecter of persons. I believe that to 
have interfered as I have done, as I have always freely 
admitted I have done, in behalf of his despised poor, 
was not wrong, but right. Now, if it is deemed nec- 
essary that I should forfeit my life for the further- 
ance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood 
further with the blood of my children, and with the 
blood of millions in this slave country whose rights 
are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enact- 
ments — I submit: so let it be done." In a post- 
script to a letter to a half-brother, written in prison, 
he said, "Say to my poor boys never to grieve for 
one moment on my account ; and should any of you 
live to see the time when you will not blush to own 
your relation to old John Brown, it will not be more 
strange than many things that have happened." In 
a letter to his old school-master, he said, " I have en- 
joyed much of life, as I was enabled to discover the 
secret of this somewhat early. It has been in making 



132 LIBRARY NOTES. 

the prosperity and happiness of others my own ; so 
that really I have had a great deal of prosperity." 
To another he wrote, " I commend my poor family 
to the kind remembrance of all friends, but I well un- 
derstand that they are not the only poor in our world. 
I ought to begin to leave off saying our world." In 
his last letter to his family, he said, " I am waiting 
the hour of my public murder with great composure 
of mind and cheerfulness, feeling the strong assurance 
that in no other possible way could I be used to so 
much advantage to the cause of God and of humanity, 
and that nothing that I or all my family have sacri- 
ficed or suffered will be lost. Do not feel ashamed 
on my account, nor for one moment despair of the 
cause, or grow weary of well-doing. I bless God I 
never felt stronger confidence in the certain and near 
approach of a bright morning and glorious day than 
I have felt, and do now feel, since my confinement 
here." In a previous letter to his family, he said, 
" Never forget the poor, nor think anything you be- 
stow on them to be lost to you, even though they may 
be as black as Ebed Melech, the Ethiopian eunuch, 
who cared for Jeremiah in the pit of the dungeon, or 
as black as the one to whom Philip preached Christ. 
' Remember them that are in bonds as bound with 
them.' " As he stepped out of the jail-door, on his 
way to the gallows, " a black woman, with a little 
child in her arms, stood near his way. The twain 
were of the despised race for whose emancipation and 
elevation to the dignity of the children of God he was 
about to lay down his life. His thoughts at that 



STANDARDS. 133 

moment none can know except as his acts interpret 
them. He stopped for a moment in his course, stooped 
over, and with the tenderness of one whose love is as 
broad as the brotherhood of man, kissed it affection- 
ately. As he came upon an eminence near the gal- 
lows, he cast his eye over the beautiful landscape, and 
followed the windings of the Blue Ridge Mountains 
in the distance. He looked up earnestly at the sun, 
and sky, and all about, and then remarked, ' This is 
a beautiful country. I have not cast my eyes over it 
before.' " " You are more cheerful than I am. Cap- 
tain Brown," said the undertaker, who sat with him 
in the wagon. " Yes," answered the old man, " I 
ought to be." " ' Gentlemen, good-by,' he said to 
two acquaintances, as he passed from the wagon to 
the scaffold, which he was first to mount. As he 
quietly awaited the necessary arrangements, he sur- 
veyed the scenery unmoved, looking principally in 
the direction of the people, in the far distance. 
' There is no faltering in his step,' wrote one who 
saw him, ' but firmly and erect he stands amid the 
almost breathless lines of soldiery that surround him. 
With a graceful motion of his pinioned right arm he 
takes the slouched hat from his head and carelessly 
casts it upon the platform by his side. His elbows 
and ankles are pinioned, the white cap is drawn over 
his eyes, the hangman's rope is adjusted around his 
neck.' ' Captain Brown,' said the sheriff, 'you are 
not standing on the drop. Will you come forward ? ' 
' I can't see you, gentlemen,' was the old man's an- 
swer, unfalteringly spoken ; * you must lead me.' The 



134 LIBRARY NOTES. 

sheriff led his prisoner forward to the centre of the 
drop. ' Shall I give yoii a handkerchief,' he then 
asked, ' and let you drop it as a signal ? ' ' No ; I 
am ready at any time ; but do not keep me needlessly 
waiting.' " 

" Give the corpse a good dose of arsenic, and make 
sure work of it ! " exclaimed a captain of Virginia 
militia. 

" The Saint, v^^hose martyrdom will make the gal- 
lows glorious like the Cross ! " exclaimed the Massa- 
chusetts sage and seer. 

Froude's reflections upon the death of John Davis, 
the navigator, one of England's Forgotten Worthies, 
may well be applied to John Brown : " A mel- 
ancholy end for such a man — the end of a warrior, 
not dying Epaminondas-like on the field of victory, 
but cut off in a poor brawl or ambuscade. Life with 
him was no summer holiday, but a holy sacrifice 
offered up to duty, and what his Master sent was 
welcome." It was " hard, rough, and thorny, trodden 
with bleeding feet and aching brow; the life of 
which the cross is the symbol ; a battle which no 
peace follows, this side the grave ; which the grave 
gapes to finish, before the victory is won ; and — 
strange that it should be so — this is the highest hfe 
of man. Look back along the great names of his- 
tory ; there is none whose life has been other than 
this. They to whom it has been given to do the 
really highest work in this earth, whoever they are, 
Jew or Gentile, Pagan or Christian, warriors, legis- 
lators, philosophers, priests, poets, kings, slaves — one 



STANDARDS. 135 

and all, their fate has been the same : the same bit- 
ter cup has been given to them to drink." 

*' Whether on the scaffold high, 
Or in the battle's van, 
The fittest place where man can die 
Is where he dies for man." 



REWARDS. 

The Bishop of Llandaff was standing in the House 
of Lords, in company with Lords Thurlow and 
Loughborough, when Lord Southampton accosted 
him : "I want your advice, my lord ; how am I to 
bring up my son so as to make him get forward in 
the world ? " "I know of but one way," replied the 
bishop ; " give him parts and poverty." Poussin, 
being shown a picture by a person of rank, remarked, 
" You only want a little poverty, sir, to make you a 
good painter." 

" The advantage of riches remains with him who 
procured them, not with the heir." Yet, says 
Froude, " The man who with no labor of his own 
has inherited a fortune, ranks higher in the world's 
esteem than his father who made it. We take rank 
by descent. Such of us as have the longest pedi- 
gree, and are therefore the furthest removed from the 
first who made the fortune and founded the family, 
we are the noblest. The nearer to the fountain, the 
fouler the stream ; and that first ancestor, who has 
soiled his fingers by labor, is no better than a par- 
venu." 

" From a very early period," says Lecky, " the ex- 
istence of slavery had produced, both in Greece and 



REWARDS. 137 

Rome, a strong contempt for commerce and for 
manual labor, which was openly professed by the 
ablest men, and which harmonized well with their 
disdain for the more utilitarian aspects of science. 
Among the Boeotians those who had defiled them- 
selves with commerce were excluded for ten years 
from all offices in the state. Plato pronounced the 
trade of a shop-keeper to be a degradation to a free- 
man, and he wished it to be punished as a crime. 
Aristotle, who asserted so strongly the political claims 
of the middle classes, declared, nevertheless, that in 
a perfect state no citizen should exercise any me- 
chanical art. Zenophon and Cicero were both of the 
same opinion. Augustus condemned a senator to 
death because he had debased his rank by taking part 
in a manufacture." 

Labor, curse though we call it, as things are, seems 
to be life's chiefest blessing. " There is more fa- 
tigue," says Tom Brown, " and trouble in a lady 
than in the most laborious life ; who would not rather 
drive a wheelbarrow with nuts about the streets, or 
cry brooms, than be Arsennus ? " When Sir Horace 
Vere died, it was asked what had occasioned his 
death ; to which some one replied, " By doing noth- 
ing." "• Too much idleness," said Burke, " fills up 
a man's time much more completely, and leaves him 
less his own master, than any sort of employment 
whatsoever." Too much leisure may be as bad as su- 
perfluous wealth, which a passage from Saadi illus- 
trates. " I saw," he says, " an Arab sitting in a 
circle of jewelers of Bdsrdh, and relating as follows : 
' Once on a time, having missed my way in the des- 



138 LIBRARY NOTES. 

ert, and having no provisions left, I gave myself up 
for lost : when I happened to find a bag full of pearls. 
I shall never forget the relish and delight that I felt 
on supposing it to be fried wheat ; nor the bitterness 
and despair which I suffered on discovering that the 
bag contained pearls.' " 

In the executive chamber one evening, there were 
present a number of gentlemen, among them Mr. 
Seward. A point in the conversation suggesting the 
thought, the president said, " Seward, you never 
heard, did you, how I earned my first dollar ? " 
" No," rejoined Mr. Seward. " Well," continued 
Lincoln, " I was about eighteen years of age ; I be- 
longed, you know, to what they call down South the 
' scrubs ; ' people who do not own slaves are nobody 
there. But we had succeeded in raising, chiefly by 
my labor, sufficient produce, as I thought, to justify 
me in taking it down the river to sell. After much 
persuasion, I got the consent of mother to go, and 
constructed a little flat-boat, large enough to take a 
barrel or two of things that we had gathered, with 
myself and little bundle, down to New Orleans. A 
steamer was coming down the river. We have, you 
know, no wharves on the Western streams ; and the 
custom was, if passengers were at any of the land- 
ings, for them to go out in a boat, the steamer stop- 
ping and taking them on board. I was contemplat- 
ing my new flat-boat, wondering whether I could 
make it stronger or improve it in any particular, 
when two men came down to the shore in carriages, 
with trunks, and looking at the different boats singled 
out mine, and asked, ' Who owns this ? ' I answered, 



REWARDS. 139 

somewhat modestly, ' I do.' ' Will you,' said one of 
them, ' take us and our trunks out to the steamer ? ' 
' Certainly,' said I. I was very glad to have the 
chance of earning something. I supposed that each 
of them would give me two or three bits. The 
trunks were put on my flat-boat, the passengers seated 
themselves on the trunks, and I sculled them out to 
the steamboat. They got on board, and I lifted up 
their heavy trunks, and put them on deck. The 
steamer was about to put on steam again, when I 
called out that they had forgotten to pay me. Each 
of them took from his pocket a silver half-dollar, and 
threw it on the floor of my boat. I could scarcely 
believe my eyes as I picked up the money. Gentle- 
men, you may think it was a very little thing, and in 
these days it seems to me a trifle ; but it was a most 
important incident in my life. I could scarcely credit 
that I, a poor boy, had earned a dollar in less than a 
day, — that by honest work I had earned a dollar. 
The world seemed wider and fairer before me. I was 
a more hopeful and confident being from that time." 
" Only such persons interest us who have stood 
in the jaws of need, and have by their own wit 
and might extricated themselves, and made man vic- 
torious." Young and old, all of us, have been in- 
tensely interested in knowing what Robinson Crusoe 
was to do with his few small means. Wonderful 
Robert Burns ! " While his youthful mother was 
still on the straw, the miserable clay cottage fell 
above her and the infant bard, who both narrowly es- 
caped, first being smothered to death, and then of 
being starved by cold, as they were conveyed through 



140 LIBRARY NOTES. 

frost and snow by night to another dwelling." While 
he was yet a child, the poverty of the family in- 
creased to wretchedness. The ^' cattle died, or were 
lost by accident ; the crops failed, and debts were ac- 
cumulating. To these buffetings of misfortune the 
family could oppose only hard labor and the most rigid 
economy. They lived so sparingly that butcher-meat 
was a stranger in their dwelling for years." "The 
farm proved a ruinous bargain," said the poet ; "and 
to clench the misfortune, we fell into the hands of a 
factor, who sat for the picture I have drawn of one 
in my tale of Twa Dogs. My indignation yet boils 
at the recollection of the scoundrel factor's insolent 
letters, which used to set us all in tears. This kind 
of life — the cheerless gloom of a hermit, with the 
unceasing moil of a galley-slave — brought me to my 
sixteenth year ; a little before which period I first 

committed the sin of rhyme My passions, 

when once lighted up, raged like so many devils, till 
they got vent in rhyme ; and then the conning over 
my verses, like a spell, soothed all into quiet." 

We are told that among the companions of Rey- 
nolds, when he was studying his art at Rome, was a 
fellow-pupil of the name of Astley. They made an 
excursion, with some others, on a sultry day, and all 
except Astley took off their coats. After several 
taunts he was persuaded to do the same, and dis- 
played on the back of his waistcoat a foaming water- 
fall. Distress had compelled him to patch his clothes 
with one of his own landscapes. Henderson, the 
actor, after a simple reading of a newspaper, repeated 
such an enormous portion of it as seemed utterly mar- 



REWARDS. 141 

velous. " If you had been obliged, like me," lie said, 
in reply to the surprise expressed by his auditors, " to 
depend during many years for your daily bread on 
getting words by heart, you would not be so much 
astonished at habit having produced the facility." 

Excellence is not matured in a day, and the cost of 
it is an old story. The beginning of Plato's Repub- 
lic, it is said, was found in his tablets written over 
and over in a variety of ways. Addison, we are told, 
wore out the patience of his printer ; frequently, when 
nearly a whole impression of a Spectator was worked 
off, he would stop the press to insert a new prepo- 
sition. Lamb's most sportive essaj-s were the result 
of most intense brain labor ; he used to spend a week 
at a time in elaborating a single humorous letter 
to a friend. Tennyson is reported to have written 
Come into the Garden, Maud, more than fifty times 
over before it pleased him ; and Locksley Hall, the 
first draught of which was written in two days, he 
spent the better part of six weeks, for eight hours 
a day, in altering and polishing. Dickens, when he 
intended to write a Christmas story, shut himself up 
for six weeks, lived the life of a hermit, and came 
out looking as haggard as a murderer. Balzac, af- 
ter he had thought out thoroughly one of his phil- 
osophical romances, and amassed his materials in a 
most laborious manner, retired to his study, and from 
that time until his book had gone to press, society 
saw him no more. When he appeared again among 
his friends, he looked, said his publisher, in the 
popular phrase, like his own ghost. The manuscript 
was afterward altered and copied, when it passed into 



142 LIBEARY NOTES. 

the hands of the printer, from whose slips the book 
was re-written for the third time. Again it went 
into the hands of the printer, — two, three, and some- 
times four separate proofs being required before the 
author's leave could be got to send the perpetually re- 
written book to press at last, and so have done with 
it. He was literally the terror of all printers and 
editors. Moore thought it quick work if he wrote 
seventy hnes of Lalla Rookh in a week. King- 
lake's Eothen, we are told, was re- written five or six 
times, and was kept in the author's writing-desk al- 
most as long as Wordsworth kept the White Doe of 
Rylstone, and kept like that to be taken out for re- 
view and correction almost every day. Buffon's 
Studies of Nature cost him fifty years of labor, 
and he re-copied it eighteen times before he sent it to 
the printer. '' He composed in a singular manner, 
writing on large-sized paper, in which, as in a ledger, 
five distinct columns were ruled. In the first column 
he wrote down the first thoughts ; in the second, he 
corrected, enlarged, and pruned it ; and so on, until he 
had reached the fifth column, within which he finally 
wrote the result of his labor. But even after this, he 
would re-compose a sentence twenty times, and once 
devoted fourteen hours to finding the proper word 
with which to round off a period." John Foster often 
spent hours on a single sentence. Ten years elapsed 
between the first sketch of Goldsmith's Traveler 
and its completion. La Rochefoucauld spent fifteen 
years in preparing his little book of maxims, altering 
some of them, Segrais says, nearly thirty times. We 
all know how Sheridan polished his wit and finished 



REWARDS. 143 

Ms jokes, tlie same things being found on different 
bits of paper, differently expressed. Rogers showed 
Crabb Robinson a note to his Italy, which, he said, 
took him a fortnight to write. It consists of a very 
few lines. 

" Fortune," says Disraeli, " has rarely condescended 
to be the companion of genius ; others find a hundred 
by-roads to her palace ; there is but one open, and 
that a very indifferent one, for men of letters. Cer- 
vantes, the immortal genius of Spain, is supposed to 
have wanted bread ; Le Sage was a victim of pov- 
erty all his life ; Camoens, the solitary pride of Por- 
tugal, deprived of the necessaries of life, perished in 
an hospital at Lisbon. The Portuguese, after his 
death, bestowed on the man of genius they had starved 
the appellation of Great. Vondel, the Dutch Shake- 
speare, after composing a number of popular trag- 
edies, lived in great poverty, and died at ninety 
years of age ; then he had his coffin carried by four- 
teen poets, who, without his genius, probably par- 
took of his wretchedness. The great Tasso was re- 
duced to such a dilemma that he was obliged to bor- 
row a crown from a friend to subsist through the 
week. He alludes to his dress in a pretty sonnet, 
which he addresses to his cat, entreating her to assist 
him, during the night, with the lustre of her eyes, 
having no candle to see to write his verses." One 
day Louis the Fourteenth asked Racine what there 
was new in the literary world. The poet answered 
that he had seen a melancholy spectacle in the house 
of Corneille, whom he found dying, deprived even of 
a little broth. Spenser, the child of Fancy, Ian- 



144 LIBRARY NOTES. 

guislied out his life in misery. Lord Burleigh, it is 
said, prevented the queen giving him a hundred 
pounds, thinking the lowest clerk in his office a more 
deserving person. Sydenham, who devoted his life 
to a laborious version of Plato, died in a miserable 
spunging-house. '' You," said Goldsmith to Bob Bry- 
anton, " seem placed at the centre of fortune's wheel, 
and, let it revolve ever so fast, are insensible to the 
motion. I seem to have been tied to the circumfer- 
ence, and whirled disagreeably round, as if on a 

whirligig Oh gods ! gods ! here in a garret, 

writing for bread, and expecting to be dunned for a 
milk-score." To another, about the same time, he 
wrote, " I have been some years struggling with a 
wretched being — with all that contempt that indi- 
gence brings with it — with all those passions which 
make contempt insupportable. What, then, has a 
jail that is formidable ? I shall at least have the 
society of wretches, and such is to me true society." 
Cervantes planned and commenced Don Quixote in 
prison. John Bunyan wrote the first part, at least, 
of Pilgrim's Progress in jail. Both of these im- 
mortal works have been the delight and solace of 
reading people wherever there has been a literature. 
The latter is said to have been translated into a 
greater number of languages than any other book in 
the world, with two exceptions, the Bible and the Im- 
itation of Christ. Sir James Harrington, author of 
Oceana, on pretense of treasonahle practices, was put 
into confinement, which lasted until he became de- 
ranged, when he was liberated. Sir Robert L'Es- 
trange was tried and condemned to death, and lay in 



REWARDS. 145 

prison nearly four years, constantly expecting to be 
led forth to execution. Ben Jonson, John Selclen, 
Jeremy Taylor, and Edmund AValler were impris- 
oned. Sir Walter Raleigli, during his twelve years' 
imprisonment, wrote his best poems and his History 
of the World, a work accounted vastly superior to all 
the English historical productions which had previ- 
ously appeared. " Written," says the historian Tyt- 
ler, "in prison, during the quiet evening of a tem- 
pestuous life, we feel, in its perusal, that we are the 
companions of a superior mind, nursed in contempla- 
tion, and chastened and improved by sorrow, in which 
the bitter recollection of injury, and the asperity of 
resentment, have passed away, leaving only the heav- 
enly lesson, that all is vanity." Old George Wither 
wrote his Shepherd's Hunting during his first impris- 
onment. The superiority of intellectual pursuits over 
the gratification of sense, and all the malice of fort- 
une, has never been more touchingly or finely illus- 
trated, it has been well said, than in this poem. 

" Can anything be so elegant," asks Emerson, " as 
to have few wants, and to serve them one's self ? It 
is more elegant to answer one's own needs than to be 
richly served ; inelegant perhaps it may look to-day, 
and to a few, but it is an elegance forever and to all. 
.... Parched corn, and a house with one apartment, 
that I may be free of all perturbations, that I may be 
serene and docile to what the mind shall speak, and 
girt and road-ready for the lowest mission of knowl- 
edge or good-Avill, is frugality for gods and heroes." 
Said Confucius, " With coarse rice to eat, with water 
to drink, and my bended arm for a pillow, — I have 

10 



146 LIBRARY NOTES. 

still joy in the midst of these things." " For my own 
private satisfaction," said Bishop Berkeley, '' I had 
rather be master of my own time than wear a dia- 
dem." " I would rather," said Thoreau, '■'• sit on a 
pumpkin and have it all to myself, than to be crowded 
on a velvet cushion If you have any enter- 
prise before you, try it in your old clothes. All men 
want, not something to do with, but something to do, 
or rather something to be. Perhaps we should never 
procure a new suit, however ragged or dirty the old, 
until we have so conducted, so enterprised or sailed in 
some way, that we feel like new men in the old, and 
that to retain it would be like keeping new wine in 
old bottles. Our moulting season, like that of fowls, 
must be a crisis in our lives. The loon retires to sol- 
itary ponds to spend it. Thus also the snake casts its 
slough, and the caterpillar its wormy coat, by an in- 
ternal industry and expansion ; for clothes are but our 

outmost cuticle and mortal coil It is desirable 

that a man be clad so simply that he can lay his hands 
on himself in the dark, and that he live in all respects 
so compactly and preparedl}^, that, if an enemy take 
the town, he can, like the old philosopher, walk out 
the gate empty-handed without anxiety." 

" You see in my chamber," said Goethe, near the 
close of his life, " no sofa ; I sit always in my old 
wooden chair, and never, till a few weeks ago, have 
permitted even a leaning-place for my head to be 
added. If surrounded by tasteful furniture, my 
thoughts are arrested, and I am placed in an agree- 
able, but passive state. Unless we are accustomed to 
them from early youth, splendid chambers and ele- 



REWARDS. 147 

gant furniture had best be left to people who neither 
have nor can have any thoughts." 

Rogers, the banker poet, once said to Wordsworth, 
*' If you would let me edit your poems, and give me 
leave to omit some half-dozen, and make a few trifling 
alterations, I would engage that you should be as pop- 
ular a poet as any living." Wordsworth's answer 
is said to have been, " I am much obliged to you, 
Mr. Rogers ; I am a poor man, but I would rather re- 
main as I am." 

Thomson solicited Burns to supply him with twenty 
or thirty songs for the musical work in which he was 
engaged, with an understanding distinctly specified, 
that the bard should receive a regular pecuniary re- 
muneration for his contributions. With the first part 
of the proposal Burns instantly complied, but per- 
emptorily rejected the last. " As to any remunera- 
tion, you may think my songs either above or below 
price ; for they shall absolutely be the one or the 
other. In the honest enthusiasm with which I em- 
bark in your undertaking, to talk of money, wages, 
fee, hire, etc., would be downright prostitution of 
soul." Thomson, some time after, notwithstanding 
the prohibition, ventured to acknowledge his services 
by a small pecuniary present, which the poet with 
some difficulty restrained himself from returning. "I 
assure you, my dear sir," he wrote to Thomson, " that 
you truly hurt me with your pecuniary parcel. It 
degrades me in my own eyes. However, to return it 
would savor of affectation ; but as to any more traffic 
of that debtor and creditor kind, I swear by that 
honor which crowns the upright statue of Robert 



148 LIBRARY NOTES. 

Burns' integrity — on the least motion of it, I will in- 
dignantly spurn the b^^-past transaction, and from 
that moment commence entire stranger to you ! 
Burns' character for generosity of sentiment and in- 
dependence of mind will, I trust, long outlive any of 
his wants which the cold, unfeeling ore can supply ; at 
least, I will take care that such a character he shall 
deserve." His sensitive nature inclined him to reject 
the present, as proud old Sam Johnson threw away 
with indignation the new shoes which had been placed 
at his chamber door. " I ought not," says Emerson, 
" to allow any man, because he has broad lands, to 
feel that he is rich in my presence. I ought to make 
him feel that I can do without his riches, that I can- 
not be bought, — neither by comfort, neither by 
pride, — and though I be utterly penniless, and re- 
ceiving bread from him, that he is the poor man be- 
side me." 

Foote's mother had been heiress to a large fort- 
ime, spent it all, and was at length imprisoned for 
debt. In this condition she wrote to Sam, who had 
been allowing her a hundred a year out of the pro- 
ceeds of his acting, " Dear Sam, I am in prison for 
debt ; come and assist your loving mother, E. Foote." 
To which her son characteristically replied, " Dear 
Mother, so am I ; which prevents his duty being paid 
to his loving mother by her ajffectionate son, Sam 
Foote." 

Isaac Disraeli, when a young man, was informed 
that a place in the establishment of a great mer- 
chant was prepared for him ; he replied that he had 
written and intended to publish a poem of consider- 



REWARDS. 149 

able length against commerce, which was the cor- 
rupter of man ; and he at once inclosed his poem to 
Dr. Johnson, who, however, was in his last illness, 
and was unable to read it. Coleridge, on being of- 
fered a half share in the Morning Post and Courier, 
with a prospect of two thousand pounds a year, an- 
nounced that he would not give up countrj^ life, and 
the lazy reading of old folios, for two thousand times 
tliat income. " In short," he added, " be^^ond three 
hundred and fifty pounds a year, I regard money as 
a real evil." Professor Agassiz, when once invited to 
lecture in Portland, Maine, replied to the munificent 
lecture association that he wag very sorry, but he was 
just then busy with some researches that left him no 
time to make money. 

Sir John Hawkins one day met Oliver Goldsmith; 
his lordship told him he had read his poem. The 
Traveler, and was much delighted with it ; that he 
was going lord lieutenant to Ireland, and that hear- 
ing that he was a native of that country, he should 
be glad to do him any kindness. The honest poor 
man and sincere lover of literature replied that he 
"had a brother there, a clergyman, that stood in 
need of help. As for m3^self, I have no dependence 
upon the promises of great men ; I look to the book- 
sellers for support ; the}^ are my best friends, and 
I am not inclined to forsake them for others." For 
this frank expression of magnanimity and manly self- 
dependence, the pricked Hawkins, and the envious 
Boswell, speaking of the incident afterward, called 
Goldsmith an " idiot." 

Dr. Johnson " contracted an inveterate dislike to 



150 LIBRARY NOTES. 

sustained intellectual exertion, and wondered how 
any one could write except for money, and never, or 
very rarely, wrote from any more elevated impulse 
than the stern pressure of want." " Who will say," 
says Richard Cumberland, " that Johnson himself 
would have been such a champion in literature, such 
a front-rank soldier in the fields of fame, if he had 
not been pressed into the service, and driven on to 
glory with the bayonet of sharp necessity pointed at 
his back ? If fortune had turned him into a field of 
clover, he would have laid down and rolled in it. 
The mere manual labor of writing would not have 
allowed his lassitude and love of ease to have taken 
the pen out of the inkhorn, unless the cravings of 
hunger had reminded him that he must fill the sheet 

before he saw the table-cloth He would have 

put up prayers for early rising, and laid in bed all 
day, and with the most active resolutions possible, 

been the most indolent mortal living I have 

heard that illustrious scholar assert that he subsisted 
himself for a considerable space of time upon the 
scanty pittance of four-pence half-penny per day. 
How melancholy to reflect that his vast trunk and 
stimulating appetite were to be supported by what 
will barely feed the weaned infant ! " No wonder 
he so often screened himself when he ate, or, later 
in life, lost his temper with Mrs. Thrale when she 
made a jest of hunger ! 

We are told that soon after the publication of the 
Life of Savage, which was anonymous, Mr. Walter 
Harte, dining with Mr. Cave, the proprietor of The 
Gentleman's Magazine, at St. John's Gate, took oc- 



KE WARDS. 151 

casion to speak very handsomely of the work. The 
next time Cave met Harte, he told him that he had 
made a man happy the other day at his home, b}^ the 
encomiums he bestowed on Savage's Life. '' How 
could that be?" said Harte ; " none were present but 
you fand I." Cave replied, " You might observe I 
sent a plate of victuals behind the screen. There 
skulked the biographer, one Johnson, whose dress 
was so shabby that he durst not make his appear- 
ance. He overheard our conversation ; and your ap- 
plauding his performance delighted him exceed- 

'' Man," said Goethe, " recognizes and praises only 
that which he himself is capable of doing ; and those 
who by nature are mediocre have the trick of de- 
preciating productions which, if they have faults, 
have also good points, so as to elevate the mediocre 
productions which they are fitted to praise." "While 
it is so undesira!ble that any man should receive what 
he has not examined, a far more frequent danger is 
that of flippant irreverence. Not all the heavens 
contain is obvious to the unassisted eye of the care- 
less spectator. Few men are great, almost as few 
able to appreciate greatness. The critics have writ- 
ten little upon the Iliad in all these ages, which Al- 
exander would have thought worth keeping with it 
in his golden box. Nor Shakespeare, nor Dante, nor 
Calderon, have as yet found a sufficient critic, though 
Coleridge and the Schlegels have lived since they 
did. Meantime," continues Margaret Fuller, ''it is 
safer to take off the hat and shout Vivat ! to the con- 
queror, who may become a permanent sovereign, than 



152 LIBRARY NOTES. 

to throw stones and mud from the gutter. The star 
shines, and that it is with no borrowed light, his foes 
are his voucher. And every planet is a portent to 
the world ; but whether for good or ill, only he can 
know who has science for many calculations. Not he 
who runs can read these books, or any books of any 
worth." 

Homer was called a plagiarist by some of the ear- 
lier critics, and was accused of having stolen from 
older poets all that was remarkable in the Iliad and 
Odyssey. Sophocles Avas brought to trial by his chil- 
dren as a lunatic. Socrates, considered as the wis- 
est and the most moral of men, Cicero treated as 
an usurer, and the pedant Athenseus as illiterate. 
Plato was accused of envy, lying, avarice, robbery, 
incontinence, and impiety. Some of the old writers 
wrote to prove Aristotle vain, ambitious, and igno- 
rant. Plato is said to have preferred the burning of 
all of the works of Democritus. Pliny and Seneca 
thought Virgil destitute of invention, and Quintilian 
was alike severe upon Seneca. It was a long time, 
says Seneca, that Democritus was taken for a mad- 
man, and before Socrates had any esteem in the 
world. How long was it before Cato could be un- 
derstood? Nay, he was affronted, contemned, and 
rejected ; and people never knew the value of him 
until they had lost him. '' The Northern Highlanders," 
said Wilson, "do not admire Waverley, so I presume 
the Southern Highlanders despise Guy Mannering. 
The Westmoreland peasants think Wordsworth a fool/ 
In Borrowdale, Southey is not known to exist. I met 
ten men at Hawick who did not think Hogg a poet, 



KEWARDS. 153 

and the whole city of Glasgow think me a madman. 
So much for the voice of the people being the voice 
of God." 

Goldsmith tells us, speaking of Waller's Ode on 
the Death of Cromwell, that English poetr}^ was not 
then " quite harmonized : so that this, which would 
now be looked upon as a slovenly sort of versifica- 
tion, was in the times in which it was written almost 
a prodigy of harmony." . At the same time, after 
praising the harmony of the Rape of the Lock, he 
observes that the irregular measure at the opening of 
the Allegro and Penseroso " hurts our English ear." 
Gray " loved intellectual ease and luxury, and wished 
as a sort of Mohammedan paradise to ' lie on a sofa, 
and read eternal new romances of Mirivaux and Cre- 
billon.' Yet all he could say of Thomson's Castle of 
Indolence, when it was first pubhshed, was, that 
there were some good verses in it. Akenside, too, 
whom he was so well fitted to appreciate, he thought 
' often obscure, and even unintelligible.' " Horace 
Walpole marveled at the dullness of people who can 
admire anything so stupidly extravagant and barba- 
rous as the Divina Commedia. " The long-continued 
contempt for Bunj^an and De Foe was merely an ex- 
pression of the ordinary feeling of the cultivated 
classes towards anything which was identified with 
Grub Street ; but it is curious to observe the incapac- 
ity of such a man as Johnson to understand Gray or 
Sterne, and the contempt which Walpole expressed 
for Johnson and Goldsmith, while he sincerely be- 
lieved that the poems of Mason were destined to 
immortality." The poet Rogers tells us that Henry 



154 LIBRARY NOTES. 

Mackenzie advised Burns to take for his model in 
song-writing Mrs. John Hunter ! " Byron believed 
that Rogers and Moore were the truest poets among 
his contemporaries ; that Pope was the first of all 
English, if not of all existing poets, and that Words- 
worth was nothing but a namby-pamby driveler. De 
Quincey speaks of ' Mr. Goethe ' as an immoral and 
second-rate author, who owes his reputation chiefly to 
the fact of his long life and his position at the court 
of Weimar, and Charles Lamb expressed a decided 
preference of Marlowe's Dr. Faustus to Goethe's im- 
mortal Faust." Dr. Johnson's opinion of Milton's 
sonnets is pretty well known — "those soul-animat- 
ing strains, alas ! too few," as Wordsworth estimated 
them. Hannah More wondered that Milton could 
write " such poor sonnets." Johnson said, " Milton, 
madam, was a genius that could cut a Colossus from 
a rock, but could not carve heads upon cherry-stones." 
He attacked Swift on all occasions. He said, speak- 
ing of Gulliver's Travels, '' When once you have 
thought of big men and little men, it is very easy 
to do all the rest." He called Gray " a dull fellow/' 
" Sir, he was dull in company, dull in his closet, dull 
everywhere. He was dull in a new way, and that 
made many people call him great." Talking of 
Sterne, he said, " Nothing odd will last long. Tris- 
tram Shandy did not last." See how Horace Wal- 
pole disposes of some of the gods of literature. " Tire- 
some Tristram Shand}", of which I could never get 
through three volumes." " I have read Sheridan's 
Critic ; it appeared wondrously flat and old, and a 
poor imitation." He speaks of wading through Spen- 



REWARDS. 155 

ser's " allegories and drawling stanzas." Chaucer's 
Canterbury Tales, he said, are " a lump of mineral 
from which Dryden extracted all the gold, and con- 
verted it into beautiful medals." " Dante was ex- 
travagant, absurd, disgusting: in short, a Meth- 
odist parson in Bedlam." " Montaigne's Travels I 
have been reading ; if I was tired of the Essays, what 
niust one be of these ? What signifies what a man 
thought who never thought of anything but himself ? 
and what signifies what a man did who never did any- 
thing?" "Boswell's book,'' he said, "is the story 
of a mountebank and his zany." Coleridge, talking of 
Goethe's Faust, said, " There is no whole in the poem ; 
the scenes are mere magic-lantern pictures, and a 
large part of the work is to me very flat. Moreover, 
much of it is vulgar, licentious, and blasphemous." 
"Coleridge's Ancient Mariner, is, I think," says 
Southey, " the clumsiest attempt at German sublim- 
ity I ever saw." Johnson told Anna Seward that 
" he would hang a dog that read the Lycidas of 
Milton twice." Waller wrote of Paradise Lost on 
its first appearance, "The old blind school- master, 
John Milton, hath published a tedious poem on the 
fall of man ; if its length be not considered a merit, 
it has no other." Cur ran declared Paradise Lost to 
be the " worst poem in the language." When Har- 
vey's book on the circulation of the blood came out, 
" he fell mightily in his practice. It was believed by 
the vulgar that he was crack-brained, and all the 
physicians were against him." Schiller's nearest 
friends decided against the Indian Death Song, 
which Goethe afterward pronounced one of his 



156 LIBRARY NOTES. 

best poems. Scott tells us that one of his nearest 
friends predicted the faikire of Waverley. Herder, 
one of the most comprehensive thinkers and versa- 
tile authors of Germany, we are told, adjured Goe- 
the not to take so unpromising a subject as Faust. 
Hume, it is said, tried to dissuade Robertson from 
writing the History of Charles V. Montesquieu, 
upon the completion of The Spirit of Laws, which 
had cost him twenty years of labor, and which ran 
through twenty-two editions in less than as many 
months after its publication, submitted the manu- 
script to Helvetius and Saurih, who returned it with 
the advice not to spoil a great reputation by publish- 
ing it. Wordsworth told Robinson that before his 
ballads were published, Tobin implored him to leave 
out We are Seven, as a poemi that would damn the 
book. It turned out to be one of the most popular. 
That charming and once popular Scottish story. The 
Annals of the Parish, by John Gait, was written ten or 
twelve years before the date of its publication, and 
anterior to the appearance of Waverley and Guy 
Mannering, and was rejected, we are told, by the 
publishers of those works, with the assurance that a 
novel or work of fiction entirel}^ Scottish would not take 
with the public. St. Pierre submitted his delightful 
tale, Paul and Virginia, to the criticisms of a circle 
of his learned friends. They told him that it was a 
failure ; that to publish it would be a piece of fool- 
ishness ; that nobody would read it. St. Pierre ap- 
pealed from his learned critics to his unlearned but 
sympathetic and sensible housekeeper. He read — 
she listened, admired, and wept. He accepted her 



EEWARDS. 157 

verdict, and will be remembered by one little story- 
longer than his contemporaries by their weary tomes. 
" On my walk with Lamb," notes Crabb Robin- 
son, "he spoke with enthusiasm of Manning, declar- 
ing that he is the most wonderful man he ever knew, 
more extraordinary than Wordsworth or Coleridge. 
Yet he does nothing. He has traveled even in 
China, and has been by land from India through Thi- 
bet, yet, as far as is known, he has written nothing." 
(" It is to be lamented," says Dr. Johnson, " that 
those who are most capable of improving mankind 
very frequently neglect to communicate their knowl- 
edge ; either because it is more pleasing to gather 
ideas than to imparfc them, or because to minds natu- 
rally great, few things appear of so much importance 
as to Reserve the notice of the public." "Great con- 
stitutions," says Sir Thomas Browne, " and such as 
are constellated unto knowledge, do nothing till 
they outdo all; they come short of themselves, if 
they go not beyond others, and must not sit down 
under the degree of worthies. God expects no 
lustre from the minor stars ; but if the the sun should 
not illuminate all, it were a sin in nature.") Rob- 
inson also makes this memorandum in his Diary : 
" A party at Miss Rogers' in the evening. Among 
those present were Milman, Lyell, and Sydney Smith. 
With the last-named I chatted for the first time. 
His faun-like face is a sort of promise of a good 
thing when he does but open his lips. He says noth- 
ing that from an indifferent person would be recol- 
lected." Rogers said of Sydney Smith (of whose 
death he had just heard), in answer to the question, 



158 LIBRARY NOTES. 

" How came it that he did not publicly show his 
powers ? " " He had too fastidious a taste, and too 
high an idea of what ought to be." The same com- 
plaint or curiosity has often been expressed of Cole- 
ridge by those who have heard so much of his 
superhuman powers. How could he have done 
more ? His was one of those great, homeless souls 
which fly between heaven and earth ; his language 
was only partly understood in this world, if wholly 
in another. His utterances were but mutterings in 
the human ears that heard them. The means he 
desperately made use of, to adapt himself, only 
spoiled his wings for flight and his voice for intelli- 
gible expression. Stupid John Chester understood 
him as well as any. Landor says, " Vast objects 
of remote altitude must be looked at a long while 
before they are ascertained. Ages are the telescope 
tubes that must be lengthened out for Shakespeare ; 
and generations of men serve but as single wit- 
nesses to his claims." " Shakespeare," said Cole- 
ridge, " is of no age — nor, I may add, of any re- 
ligion, or party, or profession. The body and sub- 
stance of his works came out of the unfathomable 
depths of his own oceanic mind ; his observation 
and reading supplied him with the drapery of his 
figures." '' It was really Voltaire," said Goethe, 
" who excited such minds as Diderot, D'Alembert, 
and Beaumarchais ; for to be somewhat near him 
a man needed to be much, and could take no holi- 
days." " Nature," said Heine, " wanted to see how 
she looked, and she created Goethe." *' Were Byron 
now alive, and Burns," said Hawthorne, " the first 



REWARDS. 159 

would come from his ancestral abbey, flinging aside, 
although unwillingly, the inherited honors of a 
thousand A'ears, to take the arm of the mighty 
peasant who grew immortal while he stooped behind 
his plow." Landor, in his Imaginary Conversa- 
tions, makes Marvell thus to address Marten : " Hast 
thou not sat convivially with Oliver Cromwell ? 
Hast thou not conversed familiarly with the only man 
greater than he, John Milton ? One was ambitious 
of perishable power, the other of imperishable glory ; 
both have attained their aim." On one occasion 
when Hazlitt and Coleridge were together, some 
comparison was introduced between Shakespeare and 
Milton. Coleridge said '' he hardly knew which to 
prefer. Shakespeare seemed to him a mere stripling 
in the art ; he was as tall and as strong, with infinitely 
more activity than Milton, but he never appeared to 
have come to man's estate ; or if he had, he would 
not have been a man, but a monster." " A rib of 
Shakespeare," said Landor, " would have made a 
Milton ; the same portion of Milton, all poets born 
ever since." Said Goethe, "Would you see Shake- 
speare's intellect unfettered, read Troilus and Cres- 
sida, and see how he uses the materials of the Iliad 
in his fashion." Said Coleridge, " Compare Nestor, 
Ajax, Achilles, etc., in the Troilus and Cressida of 
Shakespeare, with their namesakes in the Iliad. The 
old heroes seem all to have been at school ever since." 
" Young," he said, " was not a poet to be read 
through at once. His love of point and wit had 
often put an end to his pathos and sublimity ; but 
there were parts in him which must be immortal." 



160 LIBRARY NOTES. 

He loved to read a page of Young, and walk out to 
think of liim. 

" It is natural to man," said Goethe, " to regard 
himself as the object of the creation, and to think of 
all things in relation to himself, and the degree in 
which they can serve and be useful to him. Jle takes 
possession of the animal and vegetable world, and 
while he swallows other creatures as his proper food, 
he acknowledges his God, and thanks the paternal 
kindness which has made such provision for him. 
.... Generally, the personal character of the writer 
influences the public, rather than his talents as an 
artist. Napoleon said of Corneille, '- If he were liv- 
ing now, I would make him a prince,' yet he never 
read him." 

Lowell, in his essay upon Rousseau and the Senti- 
mentalists, says, "In proportion as solitude and com- 
munion with self lead the sentimentalist to exagger- 
ate the importance of his own personality, he comes 
to think the least event connected with it is of con- 
sequence to his fellow-men. If he change his shirt, 
he would have mankind aware of it. Victor Hugo, 
the greatest living representative of the class, con- 
siders it necessary to let the world know by letter 
from time to time his opinions on every conceivable 
subject about which it is not asked nor is of the least 
value unless we concede to him an immediate inspira- 
tion. We men of colder blood, in whom self-con- 
sciousness takes the form of pride, and who have 
deified inauvaiae Jionte as if our defect were our vir- 
tue, find it especially hard to understand that ar- 
tistic impulse of more southern races to pose them- 



REWARDS. 161 

selves properly on every occasion, and not even to die 
without some tribute of deference to the taste of the 
world they are leaving. Was not even mighty 
Caesar's last thought of his drapery ? Petrarch, 
seeking a solitude at Vancluse because it made him 
more likely to be in demand at Avignon, praising 
philosophic poverty with a sharp eye to the next 
rich benefice in the gift of his patron^ commending 
a good life, but careful first of a good living, happy 
only in seclusion, but making a dangerous journey 
to enjoy the theatrical show of a coronation in the 
capital, cherishing a fruitless passion which broke 
his heart three or four times a year and yet could 
not make an end of him till he had reached the 
ripe age of seventy, and survived his mistress a 
quarter of a century, — surely a more exquisite per- 
fection of inconsistency would be hard to find. 
When he returned from his journey into the north 
of Europe, he balanced the books of his unrequited 
passion, and, finding that he had now been in love 
seven years, thought the time had at last come 
to call deliberately on Death. Had Death taken him 
at his word, he would have protested that he was 
only in fun. For we find him always taking good 
care of an excellent constitution, avoiding the plague 
with commendable assiduity, and in the very year 
when he declares it absolutely essential to his peace 
of mind to die for good and all, taking refuge in the 
fortress of Capranica, from a wholesome dread of 
having his throat cut by robbers. There is such a 
difference between dying in a sonnet with a cambric 

handkerchief at one's eyes, and the prosaic reality of 
11 



162 LIBEARY NOTES. 

demise certified in the parish, register ! Practically, 
it is inconvenient to be dead. Among other things, 
it puts an end to the manufacture of sonnets." 

" Lamartine, after passing round the hat in Europe 
and America, takes to his bed from wounded pride 
when the French senate votes him* a subsidy, and 
sheds tears of humiliation." 

" There can be no doubt," says Macaulay, " that 
Byron owed the vast influence which he exercised 
over his contemporaries, at least as much to his 
gloomy egotism as to the real power of his poetry. 
We never could very clearly understand how it is 
that egotism, so unpopular in conversation, should be 
so popular in writing ; or how it is that men who 
affect in their compositions qualities and feelings 
which they have not, impose so much more easily on 
their contemporaries than on posterity. The interest 
which the loves of Petrarch excited in his own time, 
and the pitying fondness with which half Europe 
looked upon Rousseau, are well known. To readers 
of our time, the love of Petrarch seems to have been 
love of that kind which breaks no hearts ; and the 
sufferings of Rousseau to have deserved laughter 
rather than pity — to have been partly counterfeited, 
and purely the consequence of his own perverseness 
and vanity." 

Byron, we are told by one of his friends, had a 
morbid love of a bad reputation. There was hardly 
an offense of which he would not, with perfect in- 
difference, accuse himself. An old school-fellow, who 
met him on the Continent, said that he would con- 
tinually write paragraphs against himself in the 



REWARDS. 163 

foreign journals, and delighted in their republication 
by the English newspapers, as in the success of a 
practical joke. " The best thing left by Byron with 
Lady Blessington is a copy of a letter written by him 
in the name of Fletcher, giving an account of his 
own death, and of his abuse of his friends ; humor 
and irony mingled with unusual grace." He had an 
impression that he was the offspring of a demon. No 
wonder. " If a man's conduct," said Coleridge, "can- 
not be ascribed to the angelic, nor to the bestial 
within him, what is there left for us to refer it to but 
the fiendish ? Passion, without any appetite, is 
fiendish." " My journal of Switzerland," says Crabb 
Robinson, " does not mention what I well recollect, 
and Wordsworth has made the subject of a sonnet, 
the continued barking of a dog, irritated by the echo 
of his own voice. In human life this is perpetually 
occurring. It is said that a dog has been known to 
contract an illness by the continued labor of barking 
at his own echo, and finally to be killed by it." 



VI. 

LIMITS. 

Minds, like some seed-plants, delight in sporting ; 
there is great variety in thinking, but the few great 
ideas remain the same. They are constantly re-ap- 
pearing in all ages and in all literatures, modified by 
new circumstances and new uses ; though in new 
dresses, they are still the old originals. Like the 
virtues, they have great and endless services to per- 
form in this world. Now they appear in philosophy, 
now in fiction ; the moralist uses them, and the buf- 
foon ; dissociate them, analyze them, strip them of 
their innumerable dresses, and they are recognized 
and identified — the same from the foundation and 
forever. If a discriminating general reader for forty 
years had noted their continual reappearance in the 
tons of books he has perused upon all subjects, he 
would be astonished at their varied and multiplied 
uses. Thinkers he would perhaps find more numer- 
ous than thoughts ; yet of the former how few. The 
original thought of one age diffuses itself through the 
next, and expires in commonplace — to be born 
again when occasion necessitates and God wills. At 
each birth it is a new creation — to the brain it 
springs from and to the creatures it is to enlighten 
and serve. If the writer or speaker could know how 



LIMITS. 165 

often it has done even hack-service in the ages before 
him, he would repentantly blot it out, or choke in its 
utterance. In the unpleasant discovery, that indis- 
pensable and inspiring quality, self-conceit, would 
suffer a wound beyond healing. 

" The number of those writers who can, with any 
justness of expression," says Melmoth, " be termed 
thinking authors, would not form a very copious 
library, though one were to take in all of that kind 
which both ancient and modern times have produced. 
Epicurus, we are told, left behind him three hundred 
volumes of his own works, wherein he had not in- 
serted a single quotation ; and we have it upon the 
authority of Varro's own works, that he himself 
composed four hundred and ninety books. Seneca 
assures us that Didymus, the grammarian, wrote no 
less than four thousand ; but Origen, it seems, was 
yet more prolific, and extended his performances even 
to six thousand treatises. It is obvious to imagine 
with what sort . of materials the productions of such 
expeditious workmen were wrought up : sound 
thought and well-matured reflections could have no 
share, we may be sure, in these hasty performances. 
Thus are books multiplied, whilst authors are scarce ; 
and so much easier is it to write than to think." 
" The same man," said Publius Syrus, " can rarely 
say a great deal and say it to the purpose." 

To ridicule the pervading absence of thought in 
common conversation, the author of Lothair makes 
Pinto exclaim, " English is an expressive language, 
but not difficult to master. Its range is limited. It 
consists, as far as I observe, of four words : ' nice,' 



166 LIBRAEY NOTES. 

' jolly,' ' charming,' and * bore ; ' and some gramma- 
rians add, ' fond.' " 

Proverbs, old as they are, seem always new, and 
are always smartly uttered. Sancho Panza is but 
one of an immortal type, and the proverbs and max- 
ims he was always using are older than the pyramids 
— as old as spoken language. Pascal conceived that 
every possible maxim of conduct existed in the world, 
though no individual can be conversant with the en- 
tire series. " There is a certain list of vices com- 
mitted in all ages, and declaimed against by all au- 
thors, which," says Sir Thomas Browne, " will last as 
long as human nature ; which, digested into common- 
places, may serve for any theme, and never be out of 
date until doomsday." A proverb Lord John Russell 
has defined to be " the wisdom of the many in the 
wit of one." " The various humors of mankind," 
says the elder Disraeli, " in the mutability of human 
affairs, has given birth to every species ; and men 
were wise, or merry, or satirical, and .mourned or re- 
joiced in proverbs. Nations held an universal inter- 
course of proverbs, from the eastern to the western 
world ; for we discover among those which appear 
strictly national many which are common to them all. 
Of our own familiar ones several may be tracked 
among the snows of the Latins and the Greeks, and 
have sometimes been drawn from The Mines of the 
East ; like decayed families which remain in obscurity, 
they may boast of a high lineal descent whenever 
they recover their lost title-deeds. The vulgar prov- 
erb, ' To carry coals to Newcastle,' local and idio- 
matic as it appears, however, has been borrowed and 



LIMITS. 167 

applied by ourselves ; it may be found among the 
Persians ; in the Bustan of Saadi we have ' To carry 
pepper to Hindostan ; ' among the Hebrews, ' To carry 
oil to a city of olives ; ' a similar proverb occurs in 
Greek ; and in Galland's Maxims of the East we may 
discover how many of the most common proverbs 
among us, as well as some of Joe Miller's jests, are of 
Oriental origin. The resemblance of certain proverbs 
in different nations must, however, be often ascribed 
to the identity of human na'ture ; similar situations 
and similar objects have unquestionably made men 
think and act and express themselves alike. All na- 
tions are parallels of each other. Hence all collectors 
of proverbs complain of the difficulty of separating 
their own national proverbs from those which had 
crept into the language from others, particularly when 
nations have held much intercourse together. We 
have a copious collection of Scottish proverbs by 
Kelly ; but this learned man was mortified at discover- 
ing that many, which he had long believed to have 
been genuine Scottish, were not only English, but 
French, Italian, Spanish, Latin, and Greek ones; 
many of his Scottish proverbs are almost literally ex- 
pressed among the fragments of remote antiquity. It 
would have surprised him further had he been aware 
that his Greek originals were themselves but copies, 
and might have been found in D'Herbelot, Erpenius, 
and Golius, and in many Asiatic works, which have 
been more recently introduced to the enlarged knowl- 
edge of the European student, who formerly found 
his most extended researches limited by Hellenistic 
lore." 



168 LIBRARY NOTES. 

The author of The Eclipse of Faith, in one of his 
intellectual visions, saw suddenly expunged - " re- 
morselessly expunged" — from literature "every text, 
every phrase, v^hich had been quoted from the Bible, 
not only in the books of devotion and theology, but 
in those of poetry and fiction. Never before," he says, 
'' had I any adequate idea of the extent to which the 
Bible had moulded the intellectual and moral life of 
the last eighteen centuries, nor how intimately it had 
interfused itself with the habits of thought and modes 
of expression ; nor how naturally and extensively its 
comprehensive imagery and language had been intro- 
duced into human writings, and most of all where 
there had been most of genius. A vast portion of 
literature became instantly worthless, and was trans- 
formed into so much waste paper. It was almost im- 
possible to look into any book of merit, and read ten 
pages together, without coming to some provoking 
erasures and mutilations, which made whole passages 
perfectly unintelligible. Many of the sweetest pas- 
sages of Shakespeare were converted into unmeaning 
nonsense, from the absence of those words which his 
own all but divine genius had appropriated from a 
still diviner source. As to Milton, he was nearly 
ruined, as might naturally be supposed. Walter 
Scott's novels were filled with laeunce. I hoped it 
might be otherwise with the philosophers, and so it 
was ; but even here it was curious to see what strange 
ravages the visitation had wrought. Some of the most 
beautiful and comprehensive of Bacon's Aphorisms 
were reduced to enigmatical nonsense." 

A scholarly article upon Homeric Characters in and 



LIMITS. 169 

out of Homer, published in The Loudon Quarterly, 
1857, opens with this passage : "To one only among 
the countless millions of human beings has it been 
given to draw characters, by the strength of his own 
indiyidual hand, in lines of such force and yigor that 
they have become from his day to our own the com- 
mon inheritance of civilized man. That one is Homer. 
Ever since his time, besides finding his way even into 
the impenetrable East, he has found literary capital 
and available stock in trade for reciters and hearers, 
for authors and readers of all times and of all places 
within the limits of the western world. Like the sun, 
which furnishes with its light the courts and alleys of 
London, while himself unseen by their inhabitants, he 
has supphed with the illumination of his ideas mill- 
ions of minds never brought into direct contact with 
his works, and even millions hardly aware of his ex- 
istence." 

One of the most eminent platform orators of the 
time has treated the habit of borrowing, in literature, 
in a most striking manner. *' Take," he said, " the 
stories of Shakespeare, who has, perhaps, written his 
forty-odd plays. Some are historical. The rest, two 
thirds of them, he did not stop to invent, but he found 
them. These he clutched, ready-made to his hand, 
from the Italian novelists, who had taken them before 
from the East. Cinderella and her Slipper is older 
than all history, like half a dozen other baby legends. 
The annals of the world do not go back far enough to 
tell us from where they first came. Bulwer borrowed 
the incidents of his Roman stories from legends of a 
thousand years before. Indeed, Dunloch, who has 



170 LIBRARY NOTES. 

grouped the history of the novels of all Europe into 
one essay, says that in the nations of modern Europe 
there have been two hundred and fifty or three hun- 
dred distinct stories. He says at least two hundred 
of these may be traced, before Christianity, to the 
other side of the Black Sea. Even our newspaper 
jokes are enjoying a very respectable old age. Take 
Maria Edgeworth's essay on Irish bulls and the 
laughable mistakes of the Irish. The tale which Ma- 
ria Edge worth or her father thought the best is that 
famous story of a man writing a letter as follows : 
' My dear friend, I would write you more in detail, 
more minutely, if there was not an impudent fellow 
looking over my shoulder reading every word.' Q No, 
you lie ; I 've not read a word you have written ! ') 
This is an Irish bull, still it is a very old one. 
It is only two hundred and fifty years older than the 
New Testament. Horace Walpole dissented from 
Richard Lovell Edgeworth, and thought the other 
Irish bull was the best — of the man who said, 
' I would have been a very handsome man, but 
they changed me in the cradle.' That comes from 
Don Quixote, and is Spanish ; but Cervantes bor- 
rowed it from the Greek in the fourth century, and 
the Greeks stole it from the Egyptians hundreds of 
years back. There is one story which it is said 
Washington has related of a man who went into an 
inn and asked for a glass of drink from the landlord, 
who pushed forward a wine-glass about half the usual 
size. The landlord said, ' That glass out of which 
you are drinking is forty years old.' ' Well,' said the 
thirsty traveler, contemplating its minute propor- 



LIMITS. 171 

tions, ' I think it is the smallest thing I ever saw.' 
[The same story is told of Foote. Dining while in 
Paris with Lord Storniont, that thrifty Scotch peer, 
then ambassador, as usual produced his wine in the 
smallest of decanters, and dispensed it in the smallest 
of glasses, enlarging all the time on its exquisite 
growth and enormous age. " It is very little of its 
age," said Foote, holding up his diminutive glass.] 
That story as told is given as a story of Athens three 
hundred and seventy-five years before Christ was 
born. Why, all these Irish bulls are Greek — every 
one of them. Take the Irishman who carried around 
a brick as a specimen of the house he had to sell ; 
take the Irishman who shut his eyes and looked into 
the glass to see how he would look when he was 
dead ; take the Irishman that bought a crow, alleg- 
ing that crows were reported to live two hundred 
years, and he meant to set out and try it ; take the 
Irishman that met a friend who said to him, ' Why, 
sir, I heard you were dead.' ' Well,' says the man, 
' I suppose you see I am not.' ' Oh, no,' says he, ' I 
would believe the man who told me a great deal 
quicker than I would you.' Well, those are all Greek. 
A score or more of them, of the parallel character, 
come from Athens." 

On the other hand, the critics and scholiasts are 
determined that much of ancient story which has 
passed into history shall be considered only fiction, 
with hardly the slightest basis of foundation in truth. 
They would have us believe that " we have no very 
credible account of Rome or the Romans for more 
than four hundred years after the foundation of the 



172 LIBRARY NOTES. 

city ; and that the first book of Livy, containing the 
regal period, can lay claim, when severely tested, to 
no higher authority than Lord Macaulay's Lays. 
Livy states that whatever records existed prior to the 
burning of Rome by the Gauls — three hundred and 
sixty -five years after its foundation — were then 
burnt or lost. We are left, therefore, in the most 
embarrassing uncertainty whether Tarquin outraged 
Lucretia ; or Brutus shammed idiotcy, and condemned 
his sons to death ; or Mutius ScaBvola thrust his hand 
into the fire; or Curtius jumped into the gulf — if 
there was one ; or Cloelia swam the Tiber ; or Codes 
defended a bridge against an army. We could fill 
pages with skeptical doubts of scholiasts, who would 
fain deprive Diogenes of his lantern and his tub, 
j^sop of his hump, Sappho of her leap, Rhodes of its 
Colossus, and Dionysius the First of his ear ; nay, 
who pretend that Cadmus did not come from Phoeni- 
cia, that Belisarius was not blind, that Portia did not 
swallow burning coals, and that Dionysius the Sec- 
ond never kept a school at Corinth. Modern chem- 
ists have been unable to discover how Hannibal could 
have leveled rocks, or Cleopatra dissolved pearls with 
vinegar. A German pedant has actually ventured to 
question the purity of Lucretia." 

Hay ward (translator of Faust), in his article on 
Pearls and Mock Pearls of History, says, " We are 
gravely told, on historical authority, by Moore, in a 
note to one of his Irish Melodies, that during the 
reign of Bryan, King of Munster, a young lady of 
great beauty, richly dressed, and adorned with jew- 
els, undertook a journey from one end of the king- 



LIMITS. 173 

dom to another, with a wand in her hand, at the top 
of which was a ring of exceeding great value ; 'and 
such was the perfection of the laws and the govern- 
ment that no attempt was made upon her honor, nor 
was she robbed of her clothes and jewels. Precisely 
the same story is told of Alfred, of Fro thi. King of 
Denmark, and of Rollo, Duke of Normandy. An- 
other romantic anecdote, fluctuating between two or 
more sets of actors, is an episode in the amours of 
Emma, the alleged daughter of Charlemagne, who, 
finding that the snow had fallen thickly during a 
nightly interview with her lover, Eginhard, took him 
upon her shoulders, and carried him some distance 
from her bower, to prevent his footsteps from being 
traced. Unluckily, Charlemagne had no daughter 
named Emma or Imma ; and a hundred years before 
the appearance of the chronicle which records the 
adventure, it had been related in print of a German 
emperor and a damsel unknown. The story of Ca- 
nute commanding the waves to roll back rests on the 
authority of Henry of Huntingdon, who wrote about 
a hundred years after the Danish monarch. ' As for 
the greater number of the stories with which the ana 
are stuffed,' says Voltaire, ' including all those humor- 
ous replies attributed to Charles the Fifth and Henry 
the Fourth, to a hundred modern princes, you find 
them in Athenseus and in our old authors.' Dionys- 
ius the tyrant, we are told by Diogenes of Laerte, 
treated his friends like vases full of good liquors, 
which he broke when he had emptied them. This is 
precisely what Cardinal Retz says of Madame de 
Chevreuse's treatment of her lovers. There is a story 



174 LIBRARY NOTES. 

of Sully's meeting a young lady, veiled, and dressed 
in green, on the back stairs leading to Henry's apart- 
ment, and being asked by the king whether he had 
not been told that his majesty had a fever and could 
not receive that morning, replied, ' Yes, sire, but the 
fever is gone; I have just met it on the staircase, 
dressed in green.' This story is told of Demetrius 
and his father. The lesson of perseverance in adver- 
sity taught by the spider to Robert Bruce is said to 
have been taught by the same insect to Tamerlane. 
' When Columbus,' says Voltaire, ' promised a new 
hemisphere, people maintained that it did not exist ; 
and when he had discovered it, that it had been known 
a long time.' It was to confute such detractors that 
he resorted to the illustration of the egg^ already em- 
ployed by Brunelleschi when his merit in raising the 
cupola of the cathedral of Florence was contested. 
The anecdote of Northampton reading The Faery 
Queen, whilst Spenser was waiting in the ante- 
chamber, may pair off with one of Louis XIV. As 
this munificent monarch was going over the improve- 
ments of Versailles with Le Notre, the sight of each 
fresh beauty or capability tempts him to some fresh 
extravagance, till the architect cries out that if their 
promenade is continued in this fashion, it will end in 
the bankruptcy of the state. Southampton, after 
sending first twenty, and then fifty guineas, on com- 
ing to one fine passage after another, exclaims, ' Turn 
the fellow out of the house, or I shall be ruined.' On 
the morning of his execution, Charles I. said to his 
groom of the chambers, ' Let me have a shirt on more 
than ordinary, by reason the season is so sharp as 



LIMITS. 175 

probably may make me shake, which some observers 
will imagine proceeds from fear. I would have no 
such imputation ; I fear not death.' As Bailly was 
waiting to be guillotined, one of the executioners ac- 
cused him of trembling. ' I am cold,' was the reply. 
Frederick the Great is reported to have said, in ref- 
erence to a troublesome assailant, ' This man wants 
me to make a martyr of him, but he shall not have 
that satisfaction.' Vespasian told Demetrius the 
Cynic, ' You do all you can to get me to put you 
to death, but I do not kill a dog for barking at me.' 
This Demetrius was a man of real spirit and honesty. 
When Caligula tried to conciliate his good word 
by a large gift in money, he sent it back with the 
message, ' If you wish to bribe me, you must send 
me your crown.' George III. ironically asked an 
eminent divine, who was just returned from Rome, 
whether he had converted the pope. ' No, sire, I 
had nothing better to offer him.' Cardinal Ximenes, 
upon a muster which was taken against the Moors, 
was spoken to by a servant of his to stand a little 
out of the smoke of the harquebuse, but he said again 
that ' that was his incense.' The first time Charles 
XII. of Sweden was under fire, he inquired what the 
hissing he heard about his ears was, and being told 
that it was caused by the musket-balls, ' Good,' he 
exclaimed, ' this henceforth shall be my music' Pope 
Julius II., like many a would-be connoisseur, was apt 
to exhibit his taste by fault-finding. On his objecting 
that one of Michel Angelo's statues might be im- 
proved by a few touches of the chisel, the artist, with 
the aid of a few pinches of marble dust, which he 



176 LIBRARY NOTES. 

dropped adroitly, conveyed an impression that he had 
acted on the hint. When HaUfax found fault with 
some passages in Pope's translation of Homer, the 
poet, by the advice of Garth, left them as they stood, 
but told the peer that they had been retouched, and 
had the satisfaction of finding him as easily satisfied 
as his holiness. When Lycurgus was to reform and 
alter the state of Sparta, in the consultation one ad- 
vised that it should be reduced to an absolute popular 
equality ; but Lycurgus said to him, ' Sir, begin it in 
your own house.' Had Dr. Johnson forgotten this 
among Bacon's Apothegms when he told Mrs. Macau- 
lay, ' Madam, I am now become a convert to your way 
of thinking. I am convinced that all mankind are 
upon an equal footing, and to give you an unquestion- 
able proof, madam, that I am in earnest, here is a 
very sensible, civil, well-behaved fellow-citizen, your 
footman ; I desire that he may be allowed to sit down 
and dine with us ' ? " Boswell once said, " A man is 
reckoned a wise man, rather for what he does not say, 
than for what he says : perhaps upon the whole Lim- 
bertongue speaks a greater quantity of good sense 
than Manly does, but Limbertongue gives you such 
floods of frivolous nonsense that his sense is quite 
drowned. Manly gives you unmixed good sense only. 
Manly will always be thought the wisest man of the 
two." Corwin, a brilliant wit and humorist of the 
Sydney Smith stamp, and in his time the greatest of 
American stump-orators, was often heard to say that 
his life was a failure, because he had not been, with 
the public, more successful in serious veins. A friend 
relates that he was riding with him one day, when 



LIMITS. 177 

Corwin remarked of a speech made the evening 
before, " It was very good indeed, but in bad style. 
Never make the people laugh. I see that you culti- 
vate that. It is easy and captivating, but death in 
the long run to the speaker." "Why, Mr. Corwin, 
you are the last man living I expected such an opinion 
from." " Certainly, because you have not lived so 
long as I have. Do you know, my young friend, that 
the world has a contempt for the man that entertains 
it ? One must be solemn — solemn as an ass — never 
say anything that is not uttered with the greatest 
gravity, to win respect. The world looks up to the 
teacher and down at the clown ; yet, nine cases out of 
ten, the clown is the better fellow of the two." Sydney 
Smith is reported to have said to his eldest brother, 
a grave and prosperous gentleman : " Brother, you 
and I are exceptions to the laws of nature. You 
have risen by your gravity, and I have sunk by 
my levity." In one of Steele's Tatlers, Saner oft 
asked the question, why it was that actors, speaking 
of things imaginary, affected audiences as if they 
were real ; whilst preachers, speaking of things real, 
could only affect their congregations as with things 
imaginary. Bickerstaff answered, " Why, indeed, I 
don't know ; unless it is that we actors speak of things 
imaginary as if they were real, while you in the pul- 
pit speak of things real as if they were imaginary." 
This anwer, besides being borrowed by Betterton, 
has been credited to every famous actor since Steele 
printed it. Every reader of Charles Lamb remem- 
bers his amusing essay on the Origin of Roast Pig. 
The legend of the first act of oyster-eating is enough 

12 



1T8 LIBRARY NOTES. 

like it to remind one of it. It is related that a man, 
walking one day by the shore of the sea, picked up 
one of those savory bivalves, just as it was in the act 
of gaping. Observing the extreme smoothness of the 
interior of the shells, he insinuated his finger that he 
might feel the shining surface, when suddenly they 
closed upon the exploring digit, causing a sensation 
less pleasurable than he anticipated. The prompt 
withdrawal of his finger was scarcely a more natural 

I movement than its transfer to his mouth, when he 
tasted oyster-juice for the first time, as the Chinaman 
in Elia's essay, having burnt his finger, first tasted 
cracklin. The savor was delicious, — he had made a 
great discovery ; so he picked up the oyster, forced 
open the shells, banqueted upon the contents, and 
soon brought oyster-eating into fashion. Nothing, it 
is said, puzzled Bonaparte more than to meet an 
honest man of good sense ; " He did not know what 
to make of him. He would offer a man money ; if 
that failed, he would talk of glory, or promise him 
rank and power ; but if all these temptations failed, 
he set him down for an idiot, or a half-mad dreamer. 

'"Conscience was a thing he could not understand." 
Rulhiere, who was at St. Petersburg in 1762, when 
Catherine caused her husband, Peter III., to be mur- 
dered, wrote a history of the transaction on his return 
to France, which was handed about in manuscript. 
The empress was informed of it, and endeavored to 
procure the destruction of the work. Madame Geof- 
frin was sent to Rulhiere to offer him a considerable 
bribe to throw it into the fire. He eloquently remon- 
strated that it would be a base and cowardly action. 



LIMITS. 179 

which honor and virtue forbade. She heard him pa- 
tiently to the end, and then cahnly replied, " What ! 
is n't it enough ? " Lord Orrery related as an unques- 
tionable occurrence that Swift once commenced the 
service, when nobody except the clerk attended his 
church, with, " Dearly beloved Roger, the Scripture 
moveth you and me in sundry places." Mr. The- 
ophilus Swift afterward discovered the anecdote in a 
jest-book which was published before his great kins- 
man was born. " We all remember," says Mrs. 
Jameson, in her Commonplace Book of Thoughts, 
" the famous hon mot of Talleyrand. When seated 
between Madame de Stael and Madame Recamier, 
and pouring forth gallantry, first at the feet of one, 
then of the other, Madame de Stael suddenly asked 
him if she and Madame Recamier fell into the river, 
which of the two he would save first ? ' Madame,' 
replied Talleyrand, ' you could swim ! ' Now we will 
match this pretty hon mot with one far prettier, and 
founded on it. Prince S., whom I knew formerly, 
was one day loitering on the banks of the Isar, in the 
English garden at Munich, by the side of the beauti- 
ful Madame de V., then the object of his devoted 
admiration. For a while he had been speaking to 
her of his mother, for whom, vaurien as he was, he 
had ever shown the strongest filial love and respect. 
Afterward, as they wandered on, he began to pour 
forth his soul to the lady of his love with all the elo- 
quence of passion. Suddenly she turned and said to 
him, ' If your mother and myself were both to fall 
into this river, whom would you save first ? ' ' My 
mother,' he instantly replied ; and then, looking at 



180 LIBRARY NOTES. 

her expressively, immediately added, ' To save you 
first, would be as if I were to save myself first.' " 
Jones tells a story of Scott, of whom he once made a 
bust. Having a fine subject to start with, he suc- 
ceeded in giving great satisfaction. At the last 
.sitting he attempted to refine and elaborate the lines 
And markings of the face. The general sat patiently ; 
but when he came to see the result, his countenance 
indicated decided displeasure. " Why, Jones, what 
have you been doing ? " he asked. " Oh," answered 
the sculptor, " not much, I confess ; I have been 
working out the details of the face a little more, 
this morning." " Details ? " exclaimed the general 

warmly ; " the details ! Why, man, you are 

spoiling the bust!" Sir Joshua Reynolds, we are 
told, once went with one of his pupils to see a 
celebrated painting. After viewing it for a while, 
the young man gave it as his deliberate opinion 
that the picture " needed finishing." " Finishing ? " 
exclaimed Sir Joshua, a little impatiently ; " finish- 
ing would only spoil the painting." Judge Rodgers 
once related a death-bed incident of a neiglibor of 
his, — a poor honest Scotsman, a wood -sawyer, — 
whose admiration and solace, all through his hard 
life, had been Scotia's great poet. The good man, 
worn out and weary, was told by his physician that 
his last hour had come — that he must soon die. 
He received the announcement philosophically, and 
after naming a few things for which he expressed a 
desire to live, he said to the judge — about the last 
thing he said on earth, '' Yes ; for these things I 
should like to live; but — but — judge [they had 



LIMITS. 181 

many a time read the poet together] — I shall see — 
Burns ! " Socrates, upon receiving sentence of death, 
said, amongst other things, to his judges, " Is this, 
do you think, no happy journey ? Do you think it 
nothing to speak with Orpheus, Musffius, Homer, and 
Hesiod ? " " Shakespeare's Joan of Arc," says Hay- 
ward, " is a mere embodiment of English prejudice ; 
yet it is not much further from the truth than Schil- 
ler's transcendental and exquisitely poetical character 
of the maid. The German dramatist has also ideal- 
ized Don Carlos to an extent that renders recognition 
difficult ; and he has flung a halo round William Tell 
which will cling to the name while Switzerland is a 
country or patriotism any better than a name. Yet 
more than a hundred years ago the eldest son of 
Haller undertook to prove that the legend, in its main 
features, is the revival or imitation of a Danish one, 
to be found in Saxo Grammaticus. The canton of 
Uri, to which Tell belonged, ordered the book to be 
publicly burnt, and appealed to the other cantons to 
cooperate in its suppression, thereby giving addi- 
tional interest and vitality to the question, which* has 
been at length pretty well exhausted by German 
writers. The upshot is that the episode of the apple 
is relegated to the domain of the fable ; and that Tell 
himself is grudgingly allowed a commonplace share 
in the exploits of the early Swiss patriots. Strange 
to say, his name is not mentioned by any contempo- 
rary chronicler of the struggle for independence. Sir 
A. Callcott's picture of Milton and his Daughters, one 
of whom holds a pen as if writing to his dictation, is 
in open defiance of Dr. Johnson's statement that the 



182 LIBRARY NOTES. 

daughters were never taught to write. There is the 
story of Poussin impatiently dashing his sponge 
against his canvas, and producing the precise effect 
(the foam on a horse's mouth) which he had been 
long and vainly laboring for ; and there is a similar 
one told of Haydn, the musical composer, when re- 
quired to imitate a storm at sea. ' He kept trying all 
sorts of passages, ran up and down the scale, and ex- 
hausted his ingenuity in heaping together chromatic 
intervals and strange discords. Still Curtz (the au- 
thor of the libretto} was not satisfied. At last the 
musician, out of all patience, extended his hands to 
the two extremities of the keys, and, bringing them 
rapidly together, exclaimed, " The deuce take the 
tempest ; I can make nothing of it." " That is the 
very thing," exclaimed Curtz, delighted with the truth 
of the representation.' Neither Haydn nor Curtz, 
adds the author from whom we quote, had ever seen 
the sea. Sir David Brewster, in his life of Newton, 
says that neither Pemberton nor Whiston, who re- 
ceived from Newton himself the history of his first 
ideas of gravity, records the story of the falling ap- 
ple. It was mentioned, however, to Voltaire by Cath- 
erine Barton, Newton's niece, and to Mr. Green by 
Mr. Martin Folkes, the President of the Royal Soci- 
ety. ' We saw the apple-tree in 1814, and brought 
away a portion of one of its roots.' The concluding 
remark reminds us of Washington Irving's hero, who 
boasted of having parried a musket bullet with a small 
sword, in proof of which he exhibited the sword a 
little bent in the hilt. The apple is supposed to have 
fallen in 1665. Father Prout (Mahony) translated 



LIMITS. 183 

several of the Irish Melodies into Greek and Latin 
verse, and then jocularly insinuated a charge of pla- 
giarism against the author. Moore was exceedingly- 
annoyed, and remarked to a friend who made light of 
the trick, ' This is all very well for your London 
critics ; but, let me tell you, my reputation for origi- 
nality has been gravely impeached in the provincial 
newspapers on the strength of these very imitations.' " 
Dr. Johnson's Latin translation of the Messiah was 
published in 1731, and Pope is reported to have said, 
" The writer of this poem will leave it a question for 
posterity, whether his or mine be the original." 
Trench, in a note to one of his Hulsean lectures, says, 
" There is a curious account of a fraud which was 
played off on Voltaire, connecting itself with a singu- 
lar piece of literary forgery. A Jesuit missionary, 
whose zeal led him to assume the appearance of an 
Indian fakir, in the beginning of the last century 
forged a Veda, of . which the purport was secretly to 
undermine the religion which it professed to support, 
and so to facilitate the introduction of Christianity — 
to advance, that is, the kingdom of truth with a lie. 
This forged Veda is full of every kind of error or ig- 
norance in regard to the Indian religion. After ly- 
ing, however, long in a Romanist missionary college 
at Pondicherry, it found its way to Europe, and a 
transcript of it came into the hands of Voltaire, who 
eagerly used it for the purpose of depreciating the 
Christian books, and showing how many of their doc- 
trines had been anticipated by the wisdom of the 
East. The book had thus an end worthy of its be- 
ginning." 



184 LIBRARY NOTES. 

Wendell Phillips, in his lecture upon the Lost 
Arts, made some remarkable statements, to prove the 
superiority of the ancients in many things. " In 
every matter," he said, "that relates to invention — 
to use, or beauty, or form — we are borrowers. You 
may glance around the furniture of the palaces of 
Europe, and you may gather all these utensils of art 
or use, and when you have fixed the shape and forms 
in your mind, I will take you into the Museum of 
Naples, which gathers all remains of the domestic 
life of the Romans, and you shall not find a single 
one of these modern forms of art, or beauty, or use, 
that was not anticipated there. We have hardly 
added one single line or sweep of beauty to the an- 
tique I had heard that nothing had been ob- 
served in ancient times which could be called by the 
name of glass ; that there had been merely attempts 
to imitate it. In Pompeii, a dozen miles south of 
Naples, which was covered with ashes eighteen hun- 
dred years ago, they broke into a room full of glass ; 
there was ground glass, window glass, cut glass, and 
colored glass of every variety. It was undoubtedly 

a glass - maker's factory Their imitations of 

gems deceived not only the lay people, but the con- 
noisseurs were also cheated. Some of these imita- 
tions in later years have been discovered. The 
celebrated vase of the Geneva Cathedral was con- 
sidered a solid emerald. The Roman Catholic leg- 
end of it was that it was one of the treasures that 
the Queen of Sheba gave to Solomon, and that it was 
the identical cup out of which the Saviour ate the 
Last Supper. Columbus must have admired it. It 



LIMITS. 185 

was venerable in his day ; it was death at that time 
for anybody to touch it but a Catholic priest. And 
when Napoleon besieged Genoa it was offered by the 
Jews to loan the senate three millions of dollars on 
that single article as security. Napoleon took it and 
carried it to France, and gave it to the Institute. In 
a fool's night, somewhat reluctantly, the scholars said, 
' It is not a stone ; we hardly know what it is.' 
Cicero said he had seen the entire Iliad, which is a 
poem as large as the New Testament, written on skin 
so that it could be rolled up in the compass of a nut- 
shell. Now this is imperceptible to the ordinary eye. 
You have seen the Declaration of Independence in 
the compass of a quarter of a dollar, written with 
glasses. I have to-day a paper at home as long as 
half my hand, on which was photographed the whole 
contents of a London newspaper. It was put under 
a dove's wing and sent into Paris, where they en- 
larged it and read the news. That copy of the Iliad 

must have been made by some such process 

You may visit Dr. Abbott's Museum, where you will 
see the ring of Cheops. Bunsen puts him at five 
hundred years before Christ. The signet of the ring 
is about the size of a quarter of a dollar, and the en- 
graving is invisible without the aid of glasses. No 
man was ever shown into the cabinet of gems in 
Italy without being furnished with a microscope to 
look at them. It would be idle for him to look at 
them without one. He could n't appreciate the deli- 
cate lines and the expression of the faces. If you go 
to Parma, they will show you a gem once worn on 
the finger of Michel Angelo, of which the engraving 



186 LIBRARY NOTES, 

is two thousand years old, on which there are the 
figures of seven women. You mast have the aid of 
a glass in order to distinguish the forms at all. I 
have a friend who has a ring, perhaps three quarters 
of an inch in diameter, and on it is the naked figure 
of the god Hercules. By the aid of glasses you can 
distinguish the interlacing muscles, and count every 
separate hair on the eyebrows. Layard says he 
would be unable to read the engravings on Nineveh 
without strong spectacles, they are so extremely 
small. Rawlinson brought home a stone about 
twenty inches long and ten inches wide, containing 
an entire treatise on mathematics. It would be per- 
fectly illegible without glasses. Now, if we are un- 
able to read it without the aid of glasses, you may 
suppose the man who engraved it had pretty good 
spectacles. So the microscope, instead of dating 
from our time, finds its brothers in the Books of 
Moses — and these are infant brothers." Speaking 
of colors, he said, " The burned city of Pompeii 
was a city of stucco. All the houses are stucco out- 
side, and it is stained with Tyrian purple — the royal 
color of antiquity. But you can never rely on the 
name of a color after a thousand years, so the Tyrian 
purple is almost a red. This is a city of all red. It 
had been buried seventeen hundred years, and, if you 
take a shovel now and clear away the ashes, this color 
flames up upon you a great deal richer than anything 
we can produce. You can go down into the narrow 
vault which Nero built him as a retreat from the 
great heat, and you will find the walls painted all 
over with fanciful designs in arabesque, which have 



LIMITS. 187 

been buried beneath the earth fifteen hundred years ; 
but when the peasants light it up with their torches, 
the colors flash out before you as fresh as they were 
in the days of St. Paul. Page, the artist, spent 
twelve years in Venice, studying Titian's method of 
mixing his colors, and he thinks he has got it. Yet 
come down from Titian, whose colors are wonderfully 
and perfectly fresh, to Sir Joshua Reynolds, and, al- 
though his colors are not yet a hundred years old, 
they are fading ; the color on his lips is dying out, 
and the cheeks are losing their tints. He did not 
know how to mix well. And his mastery of color is 

as yet unequaled The French have a theory 

that there is a certain delicate shade of blue that 
Europeans cannot see. In one of his lectures to his 
students, Ruskin opened his Catholic mass-book and 
said, ' Gentlemen, we are the best chemists in the 
world. No Englishman ever could doubt that. But 
we cannot make such a scarlet as that, and even if we 
could, it would not last for twenty years. Yet this 
is five hundred years old.' The Frenchman says, ' I 
am the best dyer in Europe ; nobody can equal me, 
and nobody can surpass Lyons.' Yet in Cashmere, 
where the girls make shawls worth thirty thousand 
dollars, they will show him three hundred distinct 
colors which he not only cannot make but cannot 

even distinguish Mr. Colton, of the Boston 

Journal, the first week he landed in Asia, found that 
his chronometer was out of order from the steel of 
the works having become rusted. The London 
Medical and Surgical Journal advises surgeons not to 
venture to carry any lancets to Calcutta ; to have 



188 LIBRARY NOTES. 

them gilded, because English steel could not bear the 
atmosphere of India. Yet the Damascus blades of 
the Crusades were not gilded, and they are as perfect 

as they were eight centuries ago If a London 

chronometer-maker wants the best steel to use in his 
chronometer, he does not send to Sheffield, the centre 
of all science, but to the Punjaub, the empire of the 

five rivers, where there is no science at all 

Scott, in his Crusaders, describes a meeting between 
Richard Coeur de Lion and Saladin. Saladin asks 
Kichard to show him the wonderful strength for 
which he is famous, and the Norman monarch re- 
sponds by severing a bar of iron which lies on the 
floor of the tent. Saladin says, ' I cannot do that ; ' 
but he takes an eider-down pillow from the sofa, and 
drawing his keen blade across it, it falls in two pieces. 
Richard says, * This is the black art ; it is magic ; it 
is the devil ; you cannot cut that which has no re- 
sistance ; ' and Saladin, to show him that such is not 
the case, takes a scarf from his shoulders, which is so 
light that it almost floats in the air, and tossing it up, 
severs it before it can descend. George Thompson 
saw a man in Calcutta throw a handful of floss silk 
into the air, and a Hindoo sever it into pieces with 

his sabre Mr. Batterson, of Hartford, walking 

with Brunei, the architect of the Thames Tunnel, in 
Egypt, asked him what he thought of the mechanical 
power of the Egyptians, and he said, ' There is Pom- 
pey's Pillar ; it is one hundred feet high, and the 
capital weighs two thousand pounds. It is something 
of a feat to hang two thousand pounds at that height 
in the air, and the few men that can do it would 



LIMITS. 189 

better discuss Egyptian mechanics.' .... We have 
only just begun to understand ventilation properly for 
our houses, yet late experiments at the pyramids in 
Egypt show that those Egyptian tombs were ven- 
tilated in the most perfect and scientific manner. 
Again, cement is modern, for the ancients dressed 
and jointed their stones so closely that in buildings 
thousands of years old, the thin blade of a penknife 
cannot be forced between them. The railroad dates 
back to Egypt. Arago has claimed that they had 
a knowledge of steam. Bramah acknowledges that 
he took the idea of his celebrated lock from an an- 
cient Egyptian pattern. De Tocqueville says there 
was no social question that was not discussed to rags 
m Egypt." 

Humboldt, in his Cosmos, states that the Chinese 
had magnetic carriages with which to guide them- 
selves across the great plains of Tartary, one thou- 
sand years before our era, on the principle of the 
compass. The Romans used movable types to mark 
their pottery and indorse their books. Layard found 
^1 Nineveh a magnifying lens of rock crystal, which 
Sir David Brewster considers a true optical lens, and 
the origin of the microscope. Experiments foreshad- 
owing photography, giving remarkable results, began 
to be made more than three centuries ago, and more 
than two and a half centuries before Daguerre. The 
principle of the stereoscope, invented by Professor 
Wheatstone, was known to Euclid, described by Ga- 
len fifteen hundred years ago, and more fully long 
afterward in the works of Giambattista Porta. The 
Thames Tunnel, thought such a novelty, was antici- 
pated by that under the Euphrates at Babylon. 



190 LIBRARY NOTES. 

The so-called modern manifestations of spiritual- 
ism, as table-turning and direct spirit-writing, have 
been practiced in China from time immemorial ; they 
have been known there at least from the days of 
Laou-tse, and he was an aged man when Confucius 
was a youth, between five and six centuries before 
the Christian era. Those who have read the travels 
in Thibet of the two Lazarite monks. Hue and Ga- 
bet, will recall many illustrations of spiritualism from 
their pages ; and here, too, as in China, these prac- 
tices date from a very remote time. M. Tscherpanoff 
published, in 1858, at St. Petersburg, the results of 
his investigations with the Lamas of Thibet. He at- 
tests (having been a witness in one or two cases) 
" that the Lamas, when applied to for the recovery of 
stolen or hidden things, take a little table, put one 
hand on it, and after nearly half an hour the table is 
lifted up by an invisible power, and is (with the 
hand of the Lama always on it) carried to the place 
where the thing in question is to be found, whether 
in or out of doors, where it drops, generally indicat- 
ing exactly the spot where the article is to be found." 
Mesmerism is not new. Amongst Egyptian sculpt- 
ures are people in the various attitudes which mes- 
merism in modern times induces. The Hebrews knew 
something of this science, for Baalam manifestly con- 
sulted a clairvoyant — a man in a "trance with his 
eyes open." The Greeks also had a knowledge of it. 
In Taylor's Plato it is said a man appeared before 
Aristotle in the Lyceum, who could read on one side 
of a brazen shield what was written on the other. 
The Romans were not ignorant of it, for Plautus, in 



LIMITS. 191 

one of his plays, asks, " What, and although I were by 
my continual slow touch to make him as if asleep ? " 

As to social science, here is the germ of Fourier- 
ism, in the Confessions of Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, 
fifteen hundred years before Fourier : " And many of 
us friends, conferring about and detesting the turbu- 
lent turmoil of human life, had debated and now al- 
most resolved on living apart from business and the 
bustle of men ; and this was to be thus obtained : we 
were to bring whatever we might severally possess, 
and make one household of all ; so that through the 
truth of our friendship nothing should belong espe- 
cially to any, but the whole, thus derived from all, 
should as a whole belong to each, and all to all. We 
thought there might be some ten persons in this so- 
ciety ; some of us very rich, especially Romanianus, 
our townsman, from childhood a very familiar friend 
of mine, whom the grievous perplexities of his affairs 
had brought up to court. He was the most earnest 
for this project ; and his voice was of great weight, 
because his ample estate far exceeded any of the rest. 
We had settled, also, that two annual officers, as it 
were, should provide all things necessary, the rest 
being undisturbed. But when we began to consider 
whether the wives, which some of us already had, 
and others hoped to have, would allow this, all that 
plan, which was being so well moulded, fell to pieces 
in our hands, and was utterly dashed and cast aside. 
Thence we betook us to sighs and groans, and to fol- 
low the broad and beaten ways of the world." 

In this beautiful passage from the Gulistan, or 
Rose Garden, of Saadi, written more than seven cent- 



192 LIBRARY NOTES. 

uries ago, will be found an incomparable recipe for a 
famous hot-weather drink, much affected by Ameri- 
cans. Heliogabalus would have given a slice of his 
empire for that one immortal cobbler. " I recollect," 
says the poet, " that in my youth, as I was passing 
through a street, I cast my eyes on a beautiful girl. 
It was in the autumn, when the heat dried up all 
moisture from the mouth, and the sultry wind made 
the marrow boil in the bones ; so that, being unable 
to support the sun's powerful beams, I was obliged 
to take shelter under the shade of a wall iu hopes 
that some one would relieve me from the distressing 
heat of summer, and quench my thirst with a draught 
of water. Suddenly from the shade of the portico of 
a house I beheld a female form, whose beauty it is 
impossible for the tongue of eloquence to describe ; 
insomuch that it seemed as if the dawn was rising in 
the obscurity of night, or as if the water of immor- 
tality was issuing from the land of darkness. She 
held in her hand a cup of snow-water, into which she 
sprinkled sugar, and mixed it with the juice of the 
grape. I know not whether what I perceived was the 
fragrance of rose-water, or that she had infused into 
it a few drops from the blossom of her cheek. In 
short, I received the cup from her beauteous hand, 
and drinking the contents, found myself restored to 
new life. The thirst of my heart is not such that 
it can be allayed with a drop of pure water ; the 
streams of whole rivers would not satisfy it. How 
happy is that fortunate person whose eyes every 
morning may behold such a countenance. He who 
is intoxicated with wine will be sober again in the 



LIMITS. 193 

course of the night ; but he who is intoxicated by the 
cup-bearer will not recover his senses until the day 
of judgment." 

Cicero maintained the doctrine of universal brother- 
hood as distinctly as it was afterward maintained by 
the Christian Church. " Men were born," he says, 
" for the sake of men, that each should assist the 

others Nature ordains that a man should wish 

the good of every man, whoever he may be, for this 
very reason, that he is a man Nature has in- 
clined us to love men, and this is the foundation of 
the law." Marcus Aurelius crystallized the '' idea " 
of free government in one remarkable passage : 
'' The idea of a polity in which there is the same 
law for all, a polity administered with regard to equal 
rights and equal freedom of speech, and the idea of a 
kingly government which respects most of all the 
freedom of the governed." And here is the idea of 
forgiveness of injuries, by Epictetus : " Every man 
has two handles, one of which will bear taking hold 
of, the other not. If thy brother sin against thee, lay 
not hold of the matter by this, that he sins against 
thee : for by this handle the matter will not bear tak- 
ing hold of. But rather lay hold of it by this, that 
he is thy brother, thy born mate ; and thou wilt take 
hold of it by what will bear handhng." Here too is 
the idea of the Golden Rule, by Confucius, five hun- 
dred years before our- era : " To have enough empire 
over one's self, in order to judge of others by compar- 
ison with ourselves, and to act towards them as we 
would wish that one should act towards us — that is 
what we can call the doctrine of humanity. There is 

13 



194 LIBRARY NOTES. 

nothing beyond it." And this is the prayer claimed 
to have been in use by rehgious Jews for nearly four 
thousand years, found by our Lord, improved by 
Him, and adopted for the use of Christians * in all 
time : " Our Father who art in Heaven, be gracious 
unto us ! O Lord our God, hallowed be thy name, 
and let the remembrance of Thee be glorified in 
heaven above and in the earth here below ! Let thy 
kingdom rule over us now and forever ! Remit and 
forgive unto all men whatever they have done against 
me ! And lead us not into the power (hands) of temp- 
tation, but deliver us from the evil. For thine is the 
kingdom, and Thou shalt reign in glory forever and 
ever more." Now hear the saying of King Solomon 
— wiser than Confucius, or Cicero, or Marcus Aure- 
lius, or Epictetus, or any rabbi : " The thing that 
hath been is that which shall be, and there is no new 
thing under the sun." 



VII. 

INCONGRUITY. 

" How contradictory it seems," remarked Wash- 
ington Irving, writing of Oliver Goldsmith, " that one 
of the most delightful pictures of home and homefelt 
happiness should be drawn by a homeless man ; that 
the most amiable picture of domestic virtue and 
all the endearments of the married state should be 
drawn by a bachelor, who had been severed from 
domestic life almost from boyhood ; that one of the 
most tender, touching, and affecting appeals on be- 
half of female loveliness should have been made by 
a man whose deficiencies in all the graces of person 
and manner seemed to mark him out for a cynical 
disparager of the sex." Byron thought it contradic- 
tory that the ancients, in their mythology, should 
have represented Wisdom by a woman, and Love by 
a boy. " Don't you know," urged Sydney Smith, 
" as the French say, there are three sexes — men, 
women, and clergymen ? " In the old church at 
Hatfield, in England, amongst the antiquities, there 
is a recumbent statue, which every one believed was 
a woman, till Flaxman, the sculptor, examined it, and 
satisfied himself that it was a priest ! A lady, speak- 
ing of the works of the poet Thomson, observed that 
she could gather from his writings three parts of his 



196 LIBRARY NOTES. 

character : that he was an ardent lover, a great swim- 
mer, and rigorously abstinent. Savage, to whom the 
remark was addressed, assured her that, in regard to 
the first, she was altogether mistaken ; for the second, 
his friend was perhaps never in cold water in his life ; 
and as to the third, he indulged in every luxury that 
came within his reach. It was, we are told, the joke 
of the season, fifty years ago, when Lord Lansdowne 
and Sydney Smith, with a companion or two, went 
incognito to Deville, the phrenologist in the Strand, 
to have their characters read from their skulls, and 
were most perversely interpreted. Lord Lansdowne 
was pronounced to be so absorbed in generalization 
as to fail in all practical matters, and Sydney Smith 
to be a great naturalist — " never so happy as when 
arranging his birds and fishes." " Sir," said the 
divine, with a stare of comical stupidity, '' I don't 
know a fish from a bird ; " and the chancellor of the 
exchequer was conscious that " all the fiddle-faddle 
of the cabinet " was committed to him on account of 
his love of what he called practical business. Crabb 
Robinson, on one of his visits to the British Gallery, 
where a collection of English portraits was exhibited, 
was displeased to see the name of the hated Jeffreys 
put to a " dignified and sweet countenance, that 
might have conferred new grace on some delightful 
character." Consistently enough with the delineation 
of the portrait, Evelyn recorded in his Memoirs that 
he " saw the Chief Justice Jeffreys in a large company 
the night before, and that he thought he laughed, 
drank, and danced too much for a man who had that 
day condemned Algernon Sidney to the block." La- 



INCONGRUITY. 197 

vater, in his Physiognomy, says that Lord Anson, 
from his countenance, must have been a very wise 
man. Horace Walpole, who knew Lord Anson well, 
said he was the most stupid man he ever knew. 
Until a few years ago, it is stated, a portrait at Hol- 
land House was prescriptively reverenced as a speak- 
ing likeness of Addison, and a bust was designed 
after it by a distinguished sculptor. It turns out to 
be the copy of a portrait of a quite different person 
from the '* great Mr. Addison." Men's judgments 
of themselves and their own achievements are often 
just as mistaken. " Many a famous name has been 
indebted for its brightest lustre to things which 
were flung off as a pastime, or composed as an irk- 
some duty, whilst the performances on which the 
author most relied or prided himself have fallen still- 
born or been neglected by posterity. Thus Petrarch, 
who trusted to his Latin poems for immortality, 
mainly owes it to the Sonnets, which he regarded as 
ephemeral displays of feeling or fancy of the hour. 
Thus Chesterfield, the orator, the statesman, the 
Maecenas and Petronius of his age, and (above all) 
the first viceroy who ventured on ' justice to Ireland,' 
is floated down to our times by his familiar Letters 
to his Son. Thus Johnson, the Colossus of Litera- 
ture, were he to look up or down (to adopt the more 
polite hypothesis), would hardly believe his eyes or 
ears, on finding that Bozzy, the snubbed and sup- 
pressed, yet ever elastic and rebounding Bozzy, is the 
prop, the bulwark, the key-stone of his fame ; ' the 
salt which keeps it sweet, the vitality which preserves 
it from putrefaction.' " We have it upon authority 



198 LIBRARY NOTES. 

that " when a French printer complained that he was 
utterly undone by printing a solid, serious book of 
Rabelais concerning physic, Rabelais, to make him 
recompense, made that his jesting, scurrilous work, 
which repaired the printer's loss with advantage." 
Cervantes, who was fifty-eight when he published 
the first part of Don Quixote, had, like Fielding, 
*' written a considerable number of indifferent dramas 
which gave no indication of the immortal work which 
afterward astonished and delighted the world. He 
was the author of several tales, for which even his 
subsequent fame can procure very few readers, and 
which would certainly have been forgotten if the 
lustre of his masterpiece had not shed its light upon 
everything which belonged to him. It was not till 
he was verging upon three-score that he hit upon the 
happy plan which was to exhibit his genius, and 
which nothing previously sufficed to display. Field- 
ing was equally ignorant of his province. Writing 
for a subsistence, trying everything by turns, having 
the strongest interest in discovering how he could lay 
out his powers to the best advantage, he mistook his 
road, and only found it by chance. If Pamela had 
never existed, it is more than possible that English 
literature might have wanted Joseph Andrews, Tom 
Jones, and Amelia." The manuscript of Robinson 
Crusoe ran through the whole trade, nor would any 
one print it, though the writer, De Foe, was in good 
repute as an author. The bookseller who risked the 
publication was a speculator, not remarkable for dis- 
cernment. The Vicar of Wakefield lay unpublished 
for two years after the publisher, Newberry, was im- 



INCONGRUITY. 199 

portuned by Dr. Joliiison to pay sixty pounds for it 
to save the author from distress. Paradise Lost made 
a narrow escape. Sterne found it hard to find a pub- 
lisher for Tristram Shandy. The sermon in it, he 
says in the preface to his Sermons, was printed by 
itself some years before, but could find neither pur- 
chasers nor readers. When it was inserted in his 
eccentric work, with the advantage of Trim's fine 
reading, it met with a most favorable reception, and 
occasioned the others to be collected. One is tempted 
to speculate upon the books that never ^vere X3ub- 
lished. As some of the best books have been written 
in prison or captivity, so some of like quality may 
have perished with their unfortunate authors. If so 
many great authors, like Dry den, and Cervantes, and 
Le Sage, and Spenser, almost starved, barely pro- 
curing a pittance for their published works, how 
many good works may not, in despair, have been 
destroyed by their authors. If so many great works 
were accidentally discovered in manuscript, how many 
as great may have perished in that form. " The 
Romans wrote their books either on parchment or on 
paper made of the Egyptian papyrus. The latter, 
being the cheapest, was, of course, the most com- 
monly used. But after the communication between 
Europe and Egypt was broken off, on account of the 
latter having been seized upon by the Saracens, the 
papyrus was no longer in use in Italy or in other 
European countries. They were obliged, on that ac- 
count, to write all their books upon parchment, and 
as its price was high, books became extremely rare, 
and of great value. We may judge of the scarcity of 



200 LIBRARY NOTES. 

materials for writing them from one circumstance. 
There still remain several manuscripts of the eighth, 
ninth, and following centuries, written on parchment, 
from which some former writing had been erased, in 
order to substitute a new composition in its place. 
In this manner, it is probable, several books of the 
ancients perished. A book of Livy, or of Tacitus, 
might be erased, to make room for the legendary tale 
of a saint, or the superstitious prayers of a missal." 
Truly, a resurrection of the unpublished, to say the 
least, would expose an interesting mass of intellectual 
novelties. The book-tasters, wise as they think them- 
selves, are very far from being unerring in their esti- 
mates of brain values, and better things than they 
have approved may have gone into the basket. The 
weather or bad chirography may have damned many 
a production of genius. The rejection of an article 
for a quarterly may have snuffed out the most prom- 
ising talents. Who knows but some charitable re- 
former may have discovered a way to fuse sects and 
harmonize Christians, but was prevented from show- 
ing it to the world by the stupidity of printers ? The 
most wonderful and sublime things in nature and art 
are rarely appreciated at first view. Every visitor is 
disappointed at the first sight of Niagara. Mountains 
are not appreciated till we have dwelt long among 
them. Goethe was at first disturbed and confused 
by the impression which Switzerland produced on 
him. Only after repeated visits, he said, only in 
later years, when he visited those mountains as a 
mineralogist merely, could he converse with them 
at his ease. The sea is but a dead, monotonous waste, 



INCONGRUITY. 201 

till we come to feel its immensity and power. Lon- 
don is but a great town till we have wandered in it, 
lost ourselves in it, studied it, in fine, till we have 
found it too great to be comprehended, when its mar- 
velous proportions are expanded into a nation, and it 
is accepted as one of the great powers of the world. 
Sir Joshua Reynolds says he was informed by the 
keeper of the Vatican that many of those whom he 
had conducted through the various apartments of 
that edifice, when about to be dismissed, had asked 
for the works of Raphael, and would not believe that 
they had already passed through the rooms where 
they are preserved. " I remember very well," he 
says, " my own disappointment when I first visited 
the Vatican. All the indigested notions of painting 
which I had brought with me from England were to 
be totally done away with and eradicated from my 
mind. It was necessary, as it is expressed on a very 
solemn occasion, that I should become as a little child. 
Nor does painting in this respect differ from other 
arts. A just and poetical taste, and the acquisition 
of a nice, discriminative musical ear, are equally the 
work of time. Even the eye, however perfect in 
itself, is often unable to distinguish between the brill- 
iancy of two diamonds, though the experienced jew- 
eler will be amazed at its blindness." " The mu- 
sician by profession," said Goethe, "hears, in an 
orchestral performance, every instrument, and every 
single tone, whilst one unacquainted with the art is 
wrapped up in the massive effect of the whole. A 
man merely bent upon enjoyment sees in a green or 
flowery meadow only a pleasant plain, whilst the eye 



202 LIBRAKY NOTES. 

of a botanist discovers an endless detail of tlie most 
varied plants and grasses." Gainsborough says that 
an artist knows an original from a copy, by observing 
the touch of the pencil ; for there will be the same 
individuality in the strokes of the brush as in the 
strokes of a pen. " Those who can at once distin- 
guish between different sorts of handwriting are yet 
often astonished at the possession of the faculty when 
it is exercised upon pictures. No engraver, in like 
manner, can counterfeit the style of another. His 
brethren of the craft would not only immediately 
detect the forgery, but would recognize the distinct- 
ive strokes of the forger." Hogarth and Eeynolds, 
we are told, could not do each other justice. Hogarth 
ranked Reynolds very low as a painter. It does 
seem, as has been often said, that an exact estimate 
of genivis is never arrived at till the possessor is gone 
from the world. Johnson said '' Tristram Shandy 
did not last ; " and Goldsmith noticed the faults of 
Sterne only. They may each have looked with some 
feeling of envy to the far greater immediate success 
than either of themselves had enjoyed ; but it does 
not follow that Hogarth, Johnson, and Goldsmith 
were so dishonest as to deny the existence of the 
excellences they saw. Unfortunately, persons en- 
gaged in the same departments of literature or art 
generally dislike one another. It is. one of the 
drawbacks of genius. Voltaire and Eousseau hated 
each other ; Fielding despised Richardson ; Petrarch, 
Dante ; Michel Angelo sneered at Raphael ; but 
fortunately their reputations did not depend upon 
one another. Envy and hatred aside, it was impos- 



INCONGRUITY. 203 

sible for them to judge one another justly ; they were 
too near. A painter once confessed to Dr. Johnson 
that no professor of the art ever loved a person who 
pursued the same craft. " The whole class of under- 
Hngs who fed at the table of Smollett, and existed by 
his patronage, traduced his character and abused his 
works, and, as they were no less treacherous to one 
another than to their benefactor, each was eager to 
betray the rest to him." At the beginning of the 
last century, says Southey, " books which are now 
justly regarded as among the treasures of English 
literature, which are the delight of the old and the 
young, the learned and the unlearned, the high and 
the low, were then spoken of with contempt ; the 
Pilgrim's Progress as fit only for the ignorant and 
the vulgar, Robinson Crusoe for children ; if any one 
but an angler condescended to look into Izaak Walton, 
it must be for the sake of finding something to laugh 
at. It will never be forgotten, in the history of En- 
glish poetry, that with a generous and a just though 
impatient sense of indignation, Collins, as soon as his 
means enabled him, repaid the publisher of his poems 
the price which he had received for their copyright, 
indemnified him for the loss in the adventure, and 
committed the remainder, which was by far the 
greater part of the impression, to the flames. But 
it should also be remembered that in the course of 
one generation these poems, without any adventitious 
aids to bring them into notice, were acknowledged to 
be the best of their kind in the language." Tom 
Taylor's anecdote of Bott, the barrister, illustrates 
the uncertainty of literary fame. Bott occupied the 



204 LIBEARY NOTES. 

rooms opposite to Goldsmith's in Brick Court ; he 
lent the needy author money, drove him in his gig 
to the Shoemakers' Paradise, eight miles down the 
Edgeware Road, and occasionally periled both their 
necks in a ditch. Reynolds painted this good-natured 
barrister, who runs a better chance of reaching pos- 
terity in that gig of his alongside of Goldsmith, than 
by virtue of the Treatise on the Poor Laws which 
Goldsmith is said to have written up for him. And 
as if the uncertainty of fame were not great enough, 
authors sometimes increase it by most extraordinary 
means. You remember Southey's attempt to hoax 
Theodore Hook regarding the authorship of The Doc- 
tor. At Mr. Hook's death a packet of letters was found 
addressed to him, as the author of The Doctor, and ac- 
knowledging presentation copies — one from Southey 
among the rest. They had been forwarded from the 
publisher, and were intended, it is presumed, if they 
were intended for anything, as a trap for Hook's 
vanity. Sydney Smith positively denied all connec- 
tion with the Plymley Letters in one edition, and 
published them in a collection of his acknowledged 
works some months after. Sir Walter Scott, being 
taxed at a dinner-table as the author of Old Mortal- 
ity, not only denied being the author, but said to 
Murray, the publisher, who was present, '' In order 
to convince you that I am not the author, T will re- 
view the book for you in the Quarterly," — which 
he actually did, and Murray retained the manuscript 
after Sir Walter's death. The novelty of a real work 
of genius is sufficient to decry it with the incredulous 
public. All new things, much out of the ordinary 



INCONGRUITY. 205 

way, must make a struggle for existence. It is but 
the way of the world. The Jesuits of Peru intro- 
duced into Protestant England the Peruvian bark ; 
but being a remedy used by Jesuits, the Protestant 
English at once rejected the drug as the invention of 
the devil. Paracelsus introduced antimony as a valu- 
able medicine ; he was prosecuted for the innovation, 
and the French Parliament passed an act making it a 
penal offense to prescribe it. Lady Mary Wortley 
Montagu first introduced into England the practice 
of inoculation for the small-pox, by which malady 
she had lost an only brother and her own fine eye- 
lashes. She applied the process, after earnest exam- 
ination, to her only son, five years old ; and on her 
return to England the experiment was tried, at her 
suggestion, on five persons under sentence of death. 
The success of the trial did not prevent the most 
violent clamors against the innovation. " The faculty 
predicted unknown disastrous consequences, the clergy 
regarded it as an interference with Divine Provi- 
dence, and the common people were taught to look 
upon her as an unnatural mother, who had imperiled 
the safety of her own child. Although she soon gained 
influential supporters, the obloquy which she endured 
was such as to make her sometimes repent her philan- 
thropy." Jenner, who introduced the still greater dis- 
covery of vaccination, was treated with ridicule and 
contempt, and was persecuted, prosecuted, and op- 
pressed by the Royal College of Physicians. After 
nearly twenty years of patient and sagacious study 
and experiment, " he went to London to, communi- 
cate the process to the profession, and to endeavor to 



206 LIBRARY NOTES. 

procure its general adoption. His reception was dis- 
heartening in the extreme. Not only did the doctors 
refuse to make trial of the process, but the discoverer 
was accused of an attempt to ' bestialize ' his species 
by introducing into the system diseased matter from 
a cow's udder ; vaccination was denounced from the 
pulpit as ' diabolical,' and the most monstrous state- 
ments respecting its effects upon the human system 
were disseminated and believed." " On the invention 
of scissors," says Voltaire, " what was not said of 
those who pared their nails and cut off some of their 
hair that was hanging down over their noses ? They 
were undoubtedly considered as prodigals and cox- 
combs, who bought at an extravagant price an instru- 
ment just calculated to spoil the work of the Creator. 
What an enormous sin to pare the horn which God 
himself made to grow at our fingers' ends ! It was 
absolutely an insult to the Divine Being himself. 
When shirts and socks were invented, it was far 
worse. It is well known with what warmth and 
indignation the old counselors, who had never worn 
socks, exclaimed against the youthful magistrates who 
encouraged so dreadful and fatal a luxury." When 
threshing-machines were first introduced into En- 
gland, there was such an opposition to them, and arson 
became so common in consequence, that such farmers 
as had them were obliged to surrender them, or ex- 
pose them broken on the high-road. The fashion of 
wearing boots with pointed toes was supposed to have 
been peculiarly offensive to the Almighty, and was 
believed by many to have been the cause of the black 
death, which carried off, it is estimated, in six years, 



INCONGRUITY. 207 

twenty-five millions, or a fourth part of the popula- 
tion of Europe. Amongst the curiosities of literature 
is " a narrative extracted from Luther's writings, of 
the dialogue related by Luther himself to have been 
carried on between him and the devil, who, Luther 
declares, was the first who pointed out to him the 
absurdity and evil of private mass. Of course it is 
strongly pressed upon the pious reader that even 
Luther himself confesses that the Father of Lies was 
the author of the Reformation ; and a pretty good 
story is made out for the Catholics." John Gait, 
in his Life of Wolsey, saj^s, " Those pious Presby- 
terians, who inveigh against cards as the devil's 
books, are little aware that they were an instrument 
in the great work of the Reformation. The vulgar 
game about that time was the devil and the priest ; 
and the skill of the players consisted in preserving 
the priest from the devil ; but the devil in the end 
always got hold of him." Mighty means indeed trifles 
have sometimes proved. The foolish ballad of Lilli 
Burlero, treating the Papists, and chiefly the Irish, in 
a very ridiculous manner, slight and insignificant as 
it now seems, had once a more powerful effect than 
the Philippics of either Demosthenes or Cicero ; it 
contributed not a little towards the great revolution 
in 1688 ; the whole army and the people in country 
and city caught it up, and " sang a deluded prince 
out of three kingdoms." Percy has preserved the 
ballad in his Reliques, but who remembers the air ? 
My Uncle Toby, it seems, was about the last to whistle 
it. The most popular song ever written in the British 
Islands, that of Auld Lang Syne, is anonymous, and 



208 LIBRARY NOTES. 

we know no more of the author of the music than we 
do, of the author of the words. Much of Burns' great 
fame rests upon this song, in which his share amounts 
only to a few emendations. The Last Rose of Sum- 
mer, by Bishop, is said to be made up in great part 
of an old Sicilian air, originating nobody knows when. 
Old Hundred, they say, was constructed out of frag- 
ments as old as music itself — strains that are as im- 
mortal as the instinct of music. Home, Sweet Home 
was written '' in a garret in the Palais Royal, Paris, 
when poor Payne was so utterly destitute and friend- 
less that he knew not where the next day's dinner 
was to come from. It appeared originally in a di- 
minutive opera called Clari, the Maid of Milan. The 
opera is seldom seen or heard of now, but the song 
grows nearer and dearer as the years roll away, for 
' it is not of an age, but for all time.' More than 
once the unfortunate author, walking the lonely 
streets of London or Paris amid the storm and dark- 
ness, hungry, houseless, and penniless, saw the cheer- 
ful light gleaming through the windows of happy 
homes, and heard the music of his own song drifting 
out upon the gloomy night to mock the wanderer's 
heart with visions of comfort and of joy, whose blessed 
reality Avas forever denied to him. Home, Sweet 
Home was written by a homeless man." Lamartine, 
in his History of the Girondists, has given an account 
of the origin of the French national air, the Marseil- 
laise. In the garrison of Strasburg was quartered a 
young artillery officer, named Rouget de Lisle. He 
had a great taste for music and poetry, and often 
entertained his comrades during their long and te- 



INCONGRUITY. 209 

dious hours in the garrison. Sought after for his 
musical and poetical talent, he was a frequent and 
familiar guest at the house of one Dietrich, an Alsa- 
cian patriot, mayor of Strasburg. The winter of 
1792 was a period of great scarcity at Strasburg. 
The house of Dietrich was poor, his table was frugal, 
but a seat was always open for Rouget de Lisle. 
One day there was nothing but bread and some slices 
of smoked ham on the table. Dietrich, regarding the 
young officer, said to him with sad serenity, " Abun- 
dance fails at our boards ; but what matters that, if 
enthusiasm fails not at our civic fetes, nor courage in 
the hearts of our soldiers. I have still a last bottle 
of wine in my cellar. Bring it," said he to one of his 
daughters, " and let us drink France and Liberty ! 
Strasburg should have its patriotic solemnity. De 
Lisle must draw from these last drops one of those 
hymns which raise the soul of the people." The 
wine was brought and drank, after which the officer 
departed. The night was cold. De Lisle was 
thoughtful. His heart was moved, his head heated. 
He returned, staggering, to his solitary room, and 
slowly sought inspiration, sometimes in the fervor of 
his citizen soul, and anon on the ke^^s of his instru- 
ment, composing now the air before the words, and 
then the words before the air. He sang all and wrote 
nothing, and at last, exhausted, fell asleep, with his 
head resting on his instrument, and woke not till 
day-break. The music of the night returned to his 
mind like the impression of a dream. He wrote 
it, and ran to Dietrich, whom he found in the gar- 
den, engaged with his winter lettuces. The wife 
u 



210 LIBRARY NOTES. 

and daughters of the old man were not up. Dietrich 
awoke them, and called in some friends, all as pas- 
sionate as himself for music, and able to execute the 
composition of De Lisle. At the first stanza, cheeks 
grew pale ; at the second, teaTs flowed ; and at last, 
the delirium of enthusiasm burst forth. The wife of 
Dietrich, his daughters, himself, and the young officer 
threw themselves, crying, into each other's arms. 
The hymn of the country was found. Executed some 
days afterward in Strasburg, the new song flew from 
city to city, and was played by all the popular or- 
chestras. Marseilles adopted it to be sung at the 
commencement of the sittings of the clubs, and the 
Marseillaise spread it through France, singing it 
along the public roads. From this came the name of 
Marseillaise. It was the song for excited men under 
the fiery impulse of liberty. Those melodies for little 
children, just as immortal, owe their existence to cir- 
cumstances just as accidental. We mean the melodies 
of Mother Goose. The story of this Iliad of the nurs- 
ery is told by William L. Stone in the old Proy- 
idence Journal. The mother-in-law of Thomas Fleet, 
the editor, in 1731, of the Boston Weekly Rehearsal, 
was the original Mother Goose — the Mother Goose 
of the world-famous melodies. Mother Goose be- 
longed to a wealthy family in Boston, where her 
eldest daughter, Ehzabeth Goose, was married by 
Cotton Mather, in 1715, to Fleet, and in due time 
gave birth to a son. Like most mothers-in-law in 
our own day, the importance of Mrs. Goose increased 
with the appearance of her grandchild, and poor Mr. 
Fleet, half distracted with her endless nursery ditties, 



INCONGRUITY. 211 

finding all other means fail, tried what ridicule could 
effect, and actually printed a book, with the title 
" Songs for the Nursery, or Mother Goose's Melodies 
for Children, printed by T. Fleet, at his printing 
house. Pudding Lane, Boston. Price, ten coppers." 
Mother Goose was the mother of nineteen children, 
and hence we may easily trace the origin of that 
famous classic, " There was an old woman who lived 
in a shoe ; she had so many children she did n't know 
what to do." Now, as to the plays of the stage, we 
all know how some of them have gradually, in the 
long years, grown to be there, from additions by 
actors and managers, so wholly different from what 
they are in literature, that in important parts they 
would hardly be recognized as the same. Sheridan's 
Critic, with the numerous " gags" by Jack Bannister, 
King, Miss Pope, Richard Jones, Liston, Mrs. Gibbs, 
Charles Mathews, and other great actors, is a famous 
instance of the kind. By the way, speaking of plays, 
Mathews says it is possible for a man, absurd as it 
may seem, to obtain favor with the public by merely 
attending to the mechanical portion of the profession, 
without any exertion of his intellect beyond commit- 
ting his words to memory, and speaking to his " cues" 
at the right moment and with the proper emphasis. 
He gives a remarkable illustration of this strange 
possibihty. When Douglas Jerrold's play of the 
Bubbles of the Day was produced at Covent Garden 
Theatre, there was a long-experienced actor, standing 
exceedingly well with the public, and an undoubted 
favorite, who played one of the parts so admirably 
that he met with unqualified success with the audi- 



212 LIBRARY NOTES. 

eiice, and was a prominent feature in the piece, highly 
praised by the press, and compUmented by the author 
himself, as having perfectly embodied his conception. 
After the play had run for some ten or fifteen nights, 
he one day came to Mathews and asked him as a 
favor that he would let him have the manuscript of 
the piece for a short time. Certainly, said Mathews ; 
but what do you want it for ? Why, said he, I was 
unfortunately absent from the reading : and I have n't 
the slightest idea what it is about, or who and what 
I am in it. He had literally, according to Mathews, 
played his part admirablj^ for many nights to the 
gratification of the public, the press, and the author ; 
and he had never even had the curiosity to inquire in 
what way he was mixed up with the plot. He had 
seized the instructions given him by Jerrold during 
the rehearspJs, and adopted his suggestions so cor- 
rectly that he was able to fulfill all the requirements 
of the character assigned to him without the least 
idea of what he was doing, or of the person whom he 
represented. Why, it does seem that in some things 
ignorance is the foundation of knowledge. Take the 
wise doctor's remedies. They are adopted for the 
number that recover who use them, not for the num- 
bers that die, who used them also. " The sun gives 
light to their success, and the earth covers their 
failures." " If your physician," says Montaigne, 
"does not think it good for you to sleep, to drink 
wine, or to eat such and such meats, never trouble 
yourself ; I will find you another that shall not be of 
his opinion." Heine, during the eight years he lay 
bed-ridden with a kind of paralysis, read all the med- 



INCONGRUITY. 213 

ical books which treated of his complaint. " But," 
said he to some one who found him thus engaged, 
" what good this reading is to do me I don't know, 
except that it will qualify me to give lectures in 
heaven on the ignorance of doctors on earth about 
diseases of the spinal marrow." What is often ac- 
cepted as high moral truth is only a small part of 
what the philosopher has thought — the result less of 
faith than of skepticism ; the two being in about the 
proportion of Falstaff's bread to his sack. To get 
away from the ideal to the physical, what can at first 
blush be so absurd as the climatic changes believed 
by some to be produced by railroads ? The desert of 
Western America has been transformed into a fertile 
plain : the railroad, they say, has brought rain. No 
element, we are told, was wanting in the earth itself, 
nor was aught in excess to enforce sterility, but every- 
where there was drought. In the hot dust nothing 
grew but stunted hardy grass and sage brush. All 
seemed desolation and utter hopelessness. Wherever 
irrigation was tried, its success exceeded expectation 
in developing an almost miraculous productiveness in 
the soil. No enthusiast dared, however, to dream of 
the possibility of artificial irrigation over all that 
enormous expanse. Rivers entering there would soon 
have been drunk up by the thirsty earth and sky. 
Yet man's work, it would seem, has irrigated that 
whole desert by an unexpected means. The railroad 
brought rain. Year by year, since the Union Pacific 
Railroad has been operated through, the rain-fall had 
steadily increased until the summer of 1873, when 
it became, to the operators of the road, a positive 



214 LIBRARY NOTES. 

nuisance. Now, somehow, treating thus of the pro- 
duction of water, we are led to speak of one of its 
products — icicles. They are formed, science tells 
us, by the process of freezing in sunshine hot enough 
to melt snow, blister the human skin, and even, 
when concentrated, to burn up the human body 
itself. They result from the fact that air is all but 
completely transparent to the heat rays emitted by 
the sun — that is, such rays pass through the air 
without warming it. Only the scanty fraction of 
rays to which air is not transparent expend their 
force in raising its temperature. In the Alps, Tyn- 
dall tells us, when the liquefaction is copious and the 
cold intense, icicles grow to an enormous size. Over 
the edges (mostly the southern edges) of the chasms 
hangs a coping of snow, and from this depend, like 
stalactites, rows of transparent icicles, ten, twenty, 
thirty feet long, constituting one of the most beauti- 
ful features of the higher crevasses. An icicle would 
be incomprehensible if we did not know that the solar 
beams may pass through the air, and still leave it at 
an icy temperature. Speaking of icicles, one of the 
contradictions of ice is that, formed at a temperature 
of twenty-five to thirty degrees Fahrenheit, it is as 
different from that which is formed when the tem- 
perature has ranged for some time between ten de- 
grees and one degree, as chalk is from granite. The 
ice at the lower temperature is dense and hard as 
flint. It strikes fire at the prick of a skate. In 
St. Petersburg, in 1740, when masses of it were 
turned and bored for cannon, though but four inches 
thick, they were loaded with iron cannon-balls and a 



INCONGRUITY. 215 

charge of a quarter of a pound of powder, and fired 
without explosion. But ice is a cold subject to 
handle. The warm-blooded, fur-covered cat is just 
as absurdly contradictory — in one peculiarity at 
least. Gilbert White says, " There is a propensity 
belonging to common house-cats that is very remark- 
able ; that is, their violent fondness for fish, which 
appears to be their most favorite food : and yet 
nature in this instance seems to have planted in them 
an appetite that, unassisted, they know not how to 
gratify ; for of all quadrupeds cats are the least dis- 
posed towards water; and will not, when they can 
avoid it, deign to wet a foot, much less to plunge into 
that element." And there is the tortoise. The same 
ingenious naturalist we have quoted had a pet one, of 
whose habits he made many curious notes. He says 
no part of its behavior ever struck him more than the 
" extreme timidity it always expressed with regard 
to rain ; for though it had a shell that would secure 
it against the wheel of a loaded cart, yet did it dis- 
cover as much solicitude about rain as a lady dressed 
in all her best attire, shufiling away on the first 
sprinklings, and running its head up in a corner." 
But man, at last, is the creature fullest of contradic- 
tions, and his vanity is at the bottom of most of them. 
" What a sensible and agreeable companion is that 
gentleman who has just left us," said the famous 
Charles Townshend to the worthy and sensible Fitz- 
herbert ; "I never passed an evening with a more 
entertaining acquaintance in my life." " What could 
entertain you ? the gentleman never opened his Hps." 
" I grant you, my dear Fitz, but he listened faithfully 



216 LIBRARY NOTES. 

to what I said, and always laughed in the right 
place." Darwin, speaking of one of his walks in 
New Zealand, says, " I should have enjoyed it more, 
if my companion, the chief, had not possessed ex- 
traordinary conversational poAvers. I knew only three 
words — ' good,' ' bad,' and ' yes ; ' and with these I 
answered all his remarks, without, of course, having 
understood one word he said. This, however, was 
quite sufficient ; I was a good listener, an agreeable 
person, and he never ceased talking to me." John 
Chester was a delightful companion to Coleridge, on 
the same principle. This Chester, says Hazlitt, was 
one of those who was attracted to Coleridge's dis- 
course as flies are to honey, or bees in swarming-time 
to the sound of a brass pan. He gave Hazlitt his 
private opinion, though he rarely opened his lips, 
that Coleridge was a wonderful man ! " He fol- 
lowed Coleridge into Germany, where the Kantian 
philosophers were puzzled how to bring him under 
any of their categories. When he sat down at 
table with his idol, John's felicity was complete ; 
Sir Walter Scott's, or Blackwood's, when they sat 
down at the table with the king, was not more so. 
Once he was astonished," continues Hazlitt, " that 
I should be able to suggest anything to Coleridge 
that he did not already know." " Demosthenes Tay- 
lor, as he was called (that is, the editor of Demos- 
thenes), was the most silent man," said Dr. Johnson 
to Boswell, " the merest statue of a man, that I have 
ever seen. I once dined in company with him, and 
all he said during the whole time was not more than 
Richard. How a man should say only Richard, it is 



INCONGRUITY. 217 

not easy to imagine. But it was thus : Dr. Douglass 
was talking of Dr. Zacliary Grey, and was ascribing 
to him something that was written by Dr. Richard 
Grey. So, to correct him, Taylor said (imitating his 
affected sententious emphasis and nod) ' Richard.' " 
" Demosthenes " must have been " a sensible and 
agreeable companion." That one word was to the 
point, and was more effective than a dozen would 
have been to a man like Johnson. Two words, how- 
ever, if we are to believe the story chronicled by John 
of Brompton of the mother of Thomas a Becket, per- 
formed a still more memorable service. " His father, 
Gilbert a Becket, was taken prisoner during one of 
the Crusades by a Syrian emir, and held for a con- 
siderable period in a kind of honorable captivity. A 
daughter of the emir saw him at her father's table, 
heard him converse, fell in love with him, and offered 
to arrange the means by which both might escape to 
Europe. The project only partly succeeded ; he es- 
caped, but she was left behind. Soon afterward, 
however, she contrived to elude her attendants, and 
after many marvelous adventures by sea and land 
arrived in England, knowing but two English words, 
' London ' and ' Gilbert.' By constantly repeating 
the first, she was directed to the city ; and there, fol- 
lowed by a mob, she walked for months from street 
to street, crying as she went, ' Gilbert ! Gilbert ! ' 
She at last came to the street in which her lover 
lived. The mob and the name attracted the atten- 
tion of a servant in the house ; Gilbert recognized 
her : and they were married ! " But there remains 
one to be spoken of who gained immortal reputation 



218 LIBRAKY NOTES. 

for his sayings, who may be said to have never said 
anything at all of his own. Joe Miller, whose name 
as a wit is now current wherever the English language 
is spoken, was, when living, himself a jest for dull- 
ness. According to report. Miller, who was " an 
excellent comic actor, but taciturn and saturnine, was 
in the habit of spending his afternoons at the Black 
Jack, a well-known public-house in London, which at 
that time was frequented by the most respectable 
tradesmen in the neighborhood, who from Joe's im- 
perturbable gravity, whenever any risible saying was 
recounted, ironically ascribed it to him. After his 
death, having left his family unprovided for, advan- 
tage was taken of this badinage. A Mr. Motley, a 
well-known dramatist of that day, was employed to 
collect all the stray jests then current on the town. 
Joe Miller's name was affixed to them, and from that 
,day to this the pian who never uttered a jest has 
been the reputed author of every jest." 



VIII. 

MUTATIONS. 

Swift left some thoughts on various subjects — 
acute and profound — which it would appear were 
jotted down at different periods of life, and in differ- 
ent humors. In his most pros]3erous days, when he 
dreamed of becoming a bishop, he might have writ- 
ten hopefully, " No wise man ever wished to be 
younger." At a much later time in life he might 
have written, sagely and sadly, " Every man desireth 
to live long, but no man would be old." We can 
imagine he wrote the former just after he received the 
deanery of St. Patrick, and the latter just after he 
returned from the walk recorded by the author of 
Night Thoughts. He was walking with some friends 
in the neighborhood of Dublin. " Perceiving he did 
not follow us," says Young, " I went back, and found 
him fixed as a statue, and earnestly gazing upward 
at a noble elm, which in its uppermost branches was 
much decayed. Pointing at it, he said, ' I shall be 
like that tree ; I shall die at the top.' " 

Bolingbroke, writing to Swift, says, " It is now 
six in the morning ; I recall the time — and am glad 
it is over — when about this hour I used to be going 
to bed surfeited with pleasure, or jaded with business ; 
my head often full of schemes, and my heart as often 



220 LIBRARY KOTES. 

full of anxiety. Is it a misfortune, think you, that I 
rise at this hour refreshed, serene, and calm ; that the 
past and even the present affairs of life stand like ob- 
jects at a distance from me, where 1 can keep off the 
disagreeable, so as not to be strongly affected by 
them, and from whence I can draw the others nearer 
to me ? " 

De Foe moralizes in this remarkable manner : "I 
know too much of the world to expect good in it, and 
have learned to value it too little to be concerned at 
the evil. I have gone through a life of wonders, and 
am the subject of a vast variety of providences. I 
have been fed more by miracles than Elijah when the 
ravens were his purveyors. I have some time ago 
f summed up the scenes of my life in this distich : — 

y * No man has tasted differing fortunes more ; 

i And thirteen times I have been rich and poor. ' 

In the school of affliction I have learnt more phi- 
losophy than at the academy, and more divinity than 
from the pulpit. In prison I have learnt that liberty 
does not consist in open doors and the egress and re- 
gress of locomotion. I have seen the rough side of 
the world as well as the smooth ; and have in less 
than half a year tasted the difference between the 
closet of a king and the dungeon of Newgate. I have 
suffered deeply for cleaving to principles, of which in- 
tegrity I have lived to say, none but those I suffered 
for ever reproached me with." 

We are told by Middleton that " before Cicero left 
Sicily, at the end of his term as quaestor, he made 
the tour of the island, to see everything in it that 



MUTATIONS. 221 

was curious, and especially the city of Syracuse, whicli 
had always made the principal figure in its history. 
Here his first request to the magistrates, who were 
showing him the curiosities of the place, was to let 
him see the tomb of Archimedes, whose name had 
done so much honor to it ; but to his surprise, he per- 
ceived that they knew nothing at all of the matter, 
and even denied that there was any such tomb re- 
maining; yet as he was assured of it beyond all 
doubt, by the concurrent testimony of writers, and 
remembered the verses inscribed, and that there was 
a sphere with a cylinder engraved on some part of it, 
he would not be dissuaded from the pains of search- 
ing it out. When they had carried him, therefore, to 
the gate where the greatest number of their old sep- 
ulchres stood, he observed, in a spot overgrown with 
shrubs and briers, a small column, whose head just 
appeared above the bushes, ' with the figure of a 
sphere and a cylinder upon it ; this, he presently told 
the company, was the thing they were looking for ; 
and sending in some men to clear the ground of the 
brambles and rubbish, he found the inscription also 
which he expected, though the latter part of all the 
verses was effaced. Thus,' says he, * one of the 
noblest cities of Greece, and once likewise the most 
learned, had known nothing of the monument of its 
most deserving and ingenious citizen, if it had not 
been discovered to them by a native of Arpinum.' " 

Anaxagoras knew the short memory of the people, 
and chose a happy way to lengthen it, and at the 
same time to perpetuate himself. When the chief 
persons of the city paid him a visit, and asked him 



222 LIBRARY NOTES. 

whether he had any commands for them, he answered 
that he only desked that children might be permitted 
to play every year during the month in which he died. 
His request was respected, and the custom continued 
for ages. 

" Ruins," in the impressive language of Alger, 
" symbolize the wishes and fate of man ; the weak- 
ness of his works, the fleetingness of his existence. 
Who can visit Thebes, in whose crowded crypts, as 
he enters, a flight of bats chokes him with the dust 
of disintegrating priests and kings ; see the sheep 
nibbling herbage between the fallen cromlechs of 
Stonehenge ; or confront a dilapidated stronghold of 
the Middle Age, where the fox looks out of the win- 
dow and the thistle nods on the wall, without think- 
ing of these things ? They feelingly persuade him 

what he is Tyre was situated of old at the 

entry of the sea, the beautiful mistress of the earth, 
haughty in her jDurple garments, the tiara of com- 
merce on her brow. Now the dust has been scraped 
from her till she has become a blistered rock, whereon 
the solitary fisher spreads his nets. A few tattered 
huts stand among shapeless masses of masonry where 
glorious Carthage stood ; the homes of a few hus- 
bandmen where voluptuous Corinth once lifted her 
splendid array of marble palaces and golden towers. 
Many a nation, proud and populous in the elder days 
of history, like Elephanta, or Memphis, is now merely 
a tomb and a shadowy name. Pompeii and Hercu- 
laneum are empty sepulchres, which that fatal flight 
before the storm of ashes and lava cheated of their 
occupants ; the traveler sees poppies blooming in the 



MUTATIONS. 223 

streets where chariots once flashed Tigers fo- 
ray in the palace yards of Persepolis, and camels 
browse in Babylon on the site of Belshazzar's throne ; 
at Baalbec, lizards overrun the altars of the Temple 
of the Sun, and in the sculptured friezes, here the 
nests of obscene birds, there the Avebs of spiders." 

St. Austin, with his mother Monica, was led one 
day by a Roman praetor to see the tomb of Caesar. 
Himself thus describes the corpse : " It looked of a 
blue mould, the bone of the nose laid bare, the flesh 
of the nether lip quite fallen off, his mouth full of 
worms, and in his eye-pit a hungry toad, feasting upon 
the remnant portion of flesh and moisture : and so 
he dwelt in his house of darkness." 

A traveler in Ceylon, who visited the ruins of 
ancient Mahagam, says that one of the ruined build- 
ings had apparently rested upon seventy-two pillars. 
These were still erect, standing in six lines of twelve 
columns. This building must have formed an oblong 
of three hundred feet by two hundred and fifty. The 
stone causeway which passed through the ruins was 
about two miles in length, being for the most part 
overgrown with low jungle and prickly cactus. The 
first we hear of this city is 286 B. c. ; but we have 
no account of the era or cause of its destruction. 
The records of Ceylon give no satisfactory account of 
it. The wild elephants come out of the jungles and 
rub their backs against the columns of this forgotten 
temple, as the naked Indians gamble with forked 
sticks on the desolate ruins of Central America. 

But a few years sometimes change the whole face 
of a country. Sir Woodbine Parish informed Dar- 



224 LIBRARY NOTES. 

win that during the three years' drought in Buenos 
Ayres, beginning in 1827, the ground being so long 
dry, such quantities of dust were blown about that in 
the open country the landmarks became obliterated, ' 
and people could not tell the limits of their estates. 

But what shall we say of the instability of human 
greatness ? The career and end of Pompey furnish 
a striking example. " He who a few days before 
commanded kings and consuls, and all the noblest of 
Rome, was sentenced to die by a council of slaves ; 
murdered by a base deserter ; cast out naked and 
headless on the Egyptian strand ; and when the whole 
earth, as Velleius says, had scarce been sufficient for 
his victories, could not find a spot upon it at last for 
a grave. His body was burnt on the shore by one of 
his freedmen, with the planks of an old fishing-boat ; 
and his ashes, being conveyed to Rome, were deposited 
privately by his wife Cornelia in a vault of his Alban 
ViUa." 

" Aristotle, that prince of all true thinkers, loaded 
with immortal glory, was compelled to flee suddenly 
and by stealth to Chalcis, in order to save his life, and 
spare, as he said, the Athenians a new crime against 
philosophy. There, it is believed, the great man, in 
his old age, wearied with persecutions, poisoned him- 
self." 

" The venerable Hildebrand, the greatest of all the 
popes, after the herculean labors of his self-devoted 
and mighty career, crushed by an accumulation of 
hardships, said, ' I have loved justice and hated in- 
iquity ; therefore I die in exile.' " 

"The ceremony of Galileo's abjuration," says Sir 



MUTATIONS. 225 

David Brewster in his biography of that great man, 
" was one of exciting interest and of awful formality. 
Clothed in the sackcloth of a repentant criminal, the 
venerable sage fell upon his knees before the assem- 
bled cardinals ; and, laying his hands upon the Holy 
Evangelists, he invoked the divine aid in abjuring 
and detesting, and vowing never again to teach, the 
doctrine of the earth's motion and of the sun's sta- 
bility. He pledged himself that he would never 
again, either in words or in writing, propagate such 
heresies ; and he swore that he would fulfill and ob- 
serve the penances which had been inflicted upon him. 
At the conclusion of this ceremony, in which he re- 
cited his abjuration word for word, and then signed 
it, he was conveyed, in conformity with his sentence, 
to the prison of the Inquisition." All because it 
had been said that the " sun runneth about from one 
end of heaven to the other," and that " the founda- 
tions of the earth are so firmly fixed that they cannot 
be moved." 

Think of this in connection with the fact that " in 
five years Charles II. touched twenty-three thousand 
six hundred and one of his subjects for the evil ; that 
the bishops invented a sort of heathen service for the 
occasion ; that the unchristianlike, superstitious cere- 
mony was performed in public ; and that, as soon as 
prayers were ended, the Duke of Buckingham brought 
a towel, and the Earl of Pembroke a basin and ewer, 
who, after they had made obeisance to his majesty, 
kneeled down till his majesty had washed." Dr. 
Wiseman, an eminent surgeon of that period, in writ- 
ing on scrofula, says, " However, I must needs pro- 

15 



226 LIBRARY NOTES, 

fess that his majesty (Charles II.) cureth more in 
any one year than all the chirurgeons of London have 
done in an age." 

/ And think at the same time of the trial of a mother 
and her daughter, eleven years old, before " the great 
and good Sir Matthew Hale," then Lord Chief Baron, 
for witchcraft ; their conviction and execution at 
Bury St. Edmunds, principally on the evidence of Sir 
Thomas Browne, one of the first physicians and schol- 
ars of his day. 

In Fuller's Church History may be found this cu- 
rious fact, illustrating the power of superstition over 
even such a man as Wolsey. The great cardinal 
" in his life-time was informed by some fortune-tellers 
that he should have his end at Kingston. This his 
credulity interpreted of Kingston-on-Thames ; which 
made him always to avoid the riding through that 
town, though the nearest way from his house to the 
court. Afterwards, understanding that he was to be 
committed by the king's express orders to the charge 
of Sir Anthony Kingston, it struck to his heart ; too 
late perceiving himself deceived by that father of lies 
in his homonymous prediction." 

But credulity seems to have had a fbundation place 
in the characters of some of the world's greatest men. 
There, for instance, is Hooker, author of that great 
work, Ecclesiastical Polity, — according to Hallam 
" the finest as well as the most philosophical writer of 
the Elizabethan period ; " according to Lecky " the 
most majestic of English writers." Being appointed 
to preach a sermon at St. Paul's Cross, London, he 
lodged at the Shunamite's house, a dwelling appropri- 



MUTATIONS. 227 

ated to preachers, and was skillfully persuaded by the 
landlady " that it was best for him to have a wife 
that might prove a nurse to him, such an one as might 
prolong his life, and make it more comfortable, and 
such an one as she could and would provide for him 
if he thought fit to marry." The unsuspecting young 
divine agreed to abide by her choice, which fell upon 
her own daughter, who proved to be not only " a 
silly, clownish woman," but a Xantippe. Old Izaak 
Walton, in his biography of Hooker, thus philoso- 
phizes upon that remarkable marriage : " This choice 
of j\Ir. H. (if it were his choice) may be wondered 
at ; but let us consider that the prophet Ezekiel says, 
* There is a wheel within a wheel ; ' a secret, sacred 
wheel of Providence (not visible in marriages), guided 
by his hand, that ' allows not the race to the swift,' 
nor ' bread to the wise,' nor good wives to good men ; 
and He that can bring good out of evil (for mortals 
are blind to this reason) only knows why this blessing 
was denied to patient Job, to meek Moses, and to our 
as meek and patient Mr. Hooker." Further on, by 
way of analysis and apology, old Izaak quaintly says, 
" God and nature blessed him Avith so blessed a bash- 
fulness, that as in his younger days his pupils might 
easily look him out of countenance ; so neither then, 
nor in his age, did he ever willingly look any man in 
the face ; and was of so mild and humble a nature, 
that his poor parish clerk and he did never talk but 
with both their hats on or both off at the same time ; 
and to this may be added, that though he was not 
purblind, yet he was short or weak sighted; and 
where he fixed his eyes at the beginning of his ser- 



228 LIBRARY NOTES. 

mon, there they contmued till it was ended : and the 
reader has a liberty to believe, that his modesty and 
dim sight were some of the reasons why he trusted 
Mrs. Churchman to choose his wife." His anger is 
said to have been like a vial of clear water, which, 
when shook, beads at the top, but instantly subsides, 
without any soil or sediment of uncharitableness. 

Nobody knows, to say truth, how much the great, 
modest Hooker was benefited by what appeared to 
his friends his calamitous marriage. " There is no 
great evil," said Publius Syr us, " which does not 
bring with it some advantage." Calamities, we know, 
have often proved blessings. There are cases where 
blows on the head have benefited the brain, and pro- 
duced extraordinary changes for the better. Ma- 
billon was almost an idiot at the age of twenty- 
six. He fell down a stone staircase, fractured his 
skull, and was trepanned. From that moment he 
became a genius. Dr. Prichard mentioned a case of 
three brothers, who were all nearly idiots. One of 
them was injured on the head, and from that time 
he brightened up, and became a successful barrister. 
Wallenstein, too, they say, was a mere fool, till he 
fell out of a window, and awoke with enlarged ca- 
pabilities. Here is an instance noted by Robinson in 
his Diary: "After dinner called on the Flaxmans. 
Mrs. Flaxman — wife of the sculptor — admitted me 
to her room. She had about a fortnight before bro- 
ken her leg, and sprained it besides, by falling down- 
stairs. This misfortune, however, instead of occa- 
sioning a repetition of the paralytic stroke which 
she had a year ago, seemed to have improved her 



MUTATIONS. 229 

health. She had actually recovered the use of her 
hand in some degree, and her friends expect that she 
will be benefited by the accident." 

There is Cowper. But for his mental malady the 
world would have had much less of good poetry and 
fewer perfect letters. The thought of a clerkship in 
the House of Lords made him insane ! " Innocent, 
pious, and confiding, he lived in perpetual dread of 
everlasting punishment : he could only see between 
him and heaven a high wall which he despaired of 
ever being able to scale ; yet his intellectual vigor 
was not subdued by affliction. What he wrote for 
amusement or relief in the midst of ' supreme dis- 
tress,' surpasses the elaborate efforts of others made 
under the most favorable circumstances ; and in the 
very winter of his days, his fancy Avas as fresh and 
blooming as in the spring and morning of his exist- 
ence." The Diverting History of John Gilpin, the 
production of a single night, was, to repeat, written by 
a man who lived in perpetual dread of eternal punish- 
ment ; and while it was being read by Henderson, the 
actor, to large audiences in London, its author was 
raving mad. Southey, in his fine biography of the 
poet, says that Henderson read to crowded audiences 
in London, all through Lent, John Gilpin, at high 
prices. " The ballad, which had become the town 
talk, was reprinted from the newspaper, wherein it 
had lain three years dormant. Gilpin, passing at full 
stretch by the Bell at Edmonton, was to be seen at 
all print-shops. One print-seller sold six thousand. 
What had succeeded so well in London was repeated 
with inferior ability, but with equal success, on pro- 



230 LIBRARY NOTES. 

vincial stages, and the ballad became in the highest 
degree popular before the author's name became 
known." The last reading to which Cowper list- 
ened appears to have been that of his own works. 
Beginning with the first volume, Mr. Johnson went 
through them, and he listened to them in silence till 
he came to John Gilpin, which he begged not to hear. 
It reminded him of cheerful days, and of those of 
whom he could not bear to think. " The grinners 
at John Gilpin," he said, "little dream what the 
author sometimes suffers. How I hated myself yes- 
terday for having ever wrote it ! " On his death- 
bed, when the clergyman told him to confide in the 
love of the Redeemer, who desired to save all men, 
Cowper gave a passionate cry, begging him not to 
give him such consolations. To our ignorant eyes it 
looks strange that the author of our best and most 
popular hymns should have thought his sins un- 
pardonable ; should have believed himself already 
damned. 

One of Cowper's visitors and pensioners at Olney 
was a poor school-master (Teedon) who thought him- 
self specially favored by Providence, and to whom 
Cowper communicated his waking dreams, and con- 
sulted, as a person whom the Lord was pleased to 
answer in prayer. This recalls a similar superstitious 
belief of the illustrious Tycho Brahe. When he lived 
in Uraniberg he maintained an idiot of the name of 
Lep, who lay at his feet whenever he sat down to 
dinner, and whom he fed with his own hand. Per- 
suaded that his mind, when moved, was capable of 
foretelling future events, Tycho carefully marked 
everything he said. 



MUTATIONS. 231 

It is pathetic to think, says Alger, how many great 
men have, like Homer and Milton, had the windows 
of their souls closed. Galileo, in his seventy-third 
year, wrote to one of his correspondents, " Alas ! 
your dear friend has become irreparably blind. These 
heavens, this earth, this universe, which by wonderful 
observation I had enlarged a thousand times past the 
belief of past ages, are henceforth shrunk into the 
narrow space which I myself occupy. So it pleases 
God; it shall, therefore, please me also." Handel 
passed the last seven years of his life in total blind- 
ness, in the gloom of the porch of death. How he 
and the spectators must have felt when the great 
composer, in 1753, stood pale and tremulous, with his 
sightless eyeballs turned towards a tearful concourse 
of people, while his sad song from Samson, " Total 
eclipse, no sun, no moon," was delivered ! 

Beethoven was afflicted with " dense and incurable 
deafness " long before he had composed his greatest 
works. He said, '' I was nigh taking my life with 
my own hands. But art held me back. I could not 
leave the world until I had revealed what lay within 
me." He occupied for a long time a room in a re- 
mote house on a hill, and was called the Solitary of the 
Mountain, where he heard, no doubt, more distinctly 
" the voices," than if he had been blest with the best of 
ears. " When he produced his mighty opera, Fidelio, 
it failed. In vain he again modeled and remodeled it. 
He went himself into the orchestra and attempted to 
lead it ; and the pitiless public of Vienna laughed." 
His works so far surpassed the appreciation of many 
of his contemporaries as to be condemned as the va- 



232 LIBRARY NOTES. 

garies of a madman. Haydn and Mozart, as was 
/ Baid, had perfected instrumental music in form ; it 

J remained for deaf Beethoven to touch it, so that it 

\ became a living soul. 

It does seem that God in his mystery has some- 
times put out the eyes of poets and stopped the ears 
of musicians to admit them to glimpses of his own 
glories, and whisper to them his own harmonies. 
Homer and Milton had inward poetic visions which 
light and sight alone never gave to man. Beethoven, 
unable from defective hearing to conduct an orchestra, 
produced celestial harmonies out of the silence of di^ 
vine meditation. 

The philanthropy of John Howard was so prodig- 
ious that it rendered him incapable of ordinary enjoy- 
ments. His faculties were so absorbed by his great 
humanity that he was voted a bore by the liveliest 
and cleverest of his contemporaries. " But the mere 
men of taste," says John Foster, " ought to be silent 
respecting such a man as Howard ; he is above their 
sphere of judgment. The invisible spirits, who fulfill 
their commissions of philanthropy among mortals, do 
not care about pictures, statues, and public buildings; 
and no more did he, when the time in which he must 
have inspected and admired them would have been 
taken from the work to which he had consecrated his 
life. The curiosity which he might feel was reduced 
to wait till the hour should arrive when its gratifica- 
tion should be presented by conscience, which kept a 
scrupulous charge of all his time, as the most sacred 
duty of that hour. If he was still at every hour, when 
it came, fated to feel the attractions of the fine arts 



MUTATIONS. 233 

but the second claim, they might be sure of their re- 
venge ; for no other man will ever visit Rome under 
such a despotic consciousness of duty as to refuse ; 
himself time for surveying the magnifience of its ruins. ' 
Such a sin against taste is far beyond the reach of 
common saintship to commit. It implied an incon- 
ceivable severity of conviction, that he had one thing . 
to do, and that he who would do some great thing in | 
this short life must apply himself to the work with 
such a concentration of his forces as to idle spectators, i 
who live only to amuse themselves, looks like insan-y 
ity." Look a little over his wonderful life, by the 
aid of a few facts set down by the encyclopedist : 
At about the age of twenty-five he experienced a 
severe attack of illness, and upon his recovery testi- 
fied his gratitude to the woman who had nursed him, 
and who was nearly thirty years his senior, by mar- 
rying her. Moved by the accounts of the horrors of 
the earthquake at Lisbon, he embarked for that place 
with a view of doing something to alleviate the ca- 
lamity. On the voyage he was taken prisoner by a 
French privateer and carried into Brest, where he 
became a witness of the inhuman treatment to which 
prisoners of war were subjected. Designing to visit 
the new lazaretto of Marseilles, he endeavored in vain 
to procure a- passport from the French government, 
which was incensed against him for having published 
a translation of a suppressed French account of the 
interior of the B as tile. He therefore traveled 
through the country in various disguises, and after 
a series of romantic adventures and several narrow 
escapes from the police, who were constantly on his 



234 LIBRARY NOTES. 

track, succeeded in his purpose. He proceeded thence 
to Malta, Zante, Smyrna, and Constantinople, visiting 
prisons, pest-houses, and hospitals, and in the two 
latter cities gratuitously dispensing his medical serv- 
ices, often with great benefit to the poor. The free- 
dom with which he exposed his person in infected 
places, whither his attendants refused to' follow him, 
was characteristic of his fearless and self-sacrificing 
character ; but as if by a miracle he escaped all con- 
tagion. His most daring act, however, has yet to be 
recorded. Feeling that he could not speak with au- 
thority on the subject of pest-houses until he had 
experienced the discipline of one, he went to Smyrna, 
sought out a foul ship, and sailed in her for Venice. 
After a voyage of sixty days, during which by his 
energy and bravery he assisted the crew in beating off 
an attack of pirates, he arrived at his destination, and 
was subjected to a rigorous confinement in the Vene- 
tian lazaretto, under which his health suffered se- 
verely. In the preface to one of his numerous works, 
he announced his intention to pursue his work, ob- 
serving, " Should it please God to cut off my life in 
the prosecution of this design, let not my conduct be 
imputed to rashness or enthusiasm, but to a serious 
conviction that I am pursuing the path of duty." He 
died of camp-fever, which he contracted from a pa- 
tient at Kherson, Russia, on the Black Sea, having 
expended nearly the whole of his large fortune in 
various benefactions. In a speech to the electors of 
Bristol, Edmund Burke thus eloquently sums up the 
public services of Howard : "He has visited all 
Europe, not to survey the sumptuousness of palaces, 



MUTATIONS. 235 

or the stateliness of temples; not to make accurate 
measurement of the remains of ancient grandeur, nor 
to form a scale of the curiosity of modern art ; not to 
collect medals or collect manuscripts ; but to dive into 
the depths of dungeons ; to plunge into the infections 
of hospitals ; to survey the mansions of sorrow and 
pain ; to take the gauge and dimensions of misery, 
depression, and contempt; to remember the forgotten, 
to attend to the neglected, to visit the forsaken, and 
to compare and collate the distresses of all men in all 
countries." 

In persons of genius, defects often appear to take 
the place of merits, and weaknesses to act the part 
of auxiliaries. The "plastic nature of the versatile 
faculty" is such that common laws do not govern it, 
nor common standards judge it. " Men of genius," 
says an acute historian and critic of literature and 
literary men, " have often resisted the indulgence of 
one talent to exercise another with equal power ; 
some, who have solely composed sermons, could have 
touched on the foibles of society with the spirit of 
Horace or Juvenal ; Blackstone and Sir William Jones 
directed that genius to the austere studies of law and 
philology which might have excelled in the poetical 
and historical character. So versatile is this faculty 
of genius, that its possessors are sometimes uncertain 
of the manner in which they shall treat their subject, 
whether to be grave or ludicrous. When Brebeuf, 
the French translator of the Pharsalia of Lucan, had 
completed the first book as it now appears, he at the 
same time composed a burlesque version, and sent 
both to the great arbiter of taste in that da}^, to 



236 LIBRARY NOTES. 

decide whicli the poet should continue. The decision 
proved to be difficult." For that and other reasons, 
men of genius and their productions are often enig- 
mas to the world. " The hero," says Carlyle, " can 
be poet, prophet, king, priest, or what you will, ac- 
cording to the kind of world he finds himself born 
into. I confess I have no notion of a truly great man 
that could not be all sorts of men. The poet who 
could merely sit on a chair, and compose stanzas, would 
never make a stanza worth much. He could not sing 
the heroic warrior, unless he himself were at least a 
heroic warrior too. I fancy there is in him the poli- 
tician, the thinker, legislator, philosopher; in one 
or the other degree, he could have been, he is, all 

these Shakespeare, — one knows not what he 

could not have made in the supreme degree." 

" It is notorious," says Macaulay, " that Niccolo 
Machiavelli, out of whose surname they have coined an 
epithet for a knave, and out of his Christian name a 
synonym for the devil, was through life a zealous re- 
publican. In the same year in which he composed 
his manual of king-craft, he suffered imprisonment 
and torture in the cause of public liberty. It seems 
inconceivable that the martyr of freedom should have 
designedly acted as the apostle of tyranny." But the 
real object and meaning of his celebrated book. The 
Prince, have been subjects of dispute for centuries. 
One old critic says, '' Machiavel is a strenuous de- 
fender of democracy ; he was born, educated, and 
respected under that form of government, and was a 
great enemy to tyranny. Hence it is that he does 
not favor a tyrant ; it is not his design to instruct a 



MUTATIONS. 287 

tyrant, but to detect his secret attempts, and expose 
him naked and conspicuous to the poor people. Do 
we not know there have been many princes such as 
he describes ? Why are such princes angry at being 
immortalized by his means ? This excellent author's 
design was, under the show of instructing the prince, 
to inform the people." Another says, " I must say 
that Machiavel, who passed everywhere for a teachfer 
of tyranny, detested it more than any man of his 
time ; as may easily appear by the tenth chapter of 
the first book of his Discourses, in which he expresses 
himself very strongly against tyrants." Nardi, his 
contemporary, calls his works '' panegyrics upon lib- 
erty." Bayle says, " The Jesuit Porsevin, who had 
not read The Prince, was nevertheless the cause of its 
being condemned by the Inquisition. He charges 
Machiavel with such things as are not in The Prince. 
His charges were made upon passages from a work, 
published anonymously, entitled Anti-Machiavel, and 
not from The Prince. The Prince was published about 
the year 1515, and dedicated to Lorenzo de' Medici, 
nephew to Leo X. It did not prejudice the author 
with this pope, who nevertheless was the first who 
threatened those with excommunication that read a 
prohibited book ! " 

Sir John Denham, according to Count Grammont, 
"was one of the brightest geniuses England ever pro- 
duced for wit and humor, and for brilliancy of com- 
position ; satirical and free in his poems, he spared 
neither frigid writers nor jealous husbands, nor even 
their wives ; every part abounded with the most poign- 
ant wit, and the most entertaining stories ; but his 



238 LIBRARY NOTES. 

most delicate and spirited raillery turned generally 
against matrimony ; and as if he wished to confirm, 
by his own example, the truth of what he had written 
in his youth," he married, at the age of seventy-nine, 
Miss Brook, aged eighteen, a favorite of King Charles 
II., and mistress of his brother, the Duke of York, 
afterwards King James II. "As no person enter- 
tained any doubt of his having poisoned her (on ac- 
count of jealousy), the populace of his neighborhood 
had a design of tearing him in pieces as soon as he 
should come abroad ; but he shut himself up to be- 
wail her death, until their fury was appeased by a 
magnificent funeral, at which he distributed four times 
more burnt wine than had ever been drank at any 
burial in England." 

(You remember the plea Denham urged in behalf 
of old George Wither, the Puritan poet, when he was 
taken prisoner by the Cavaliers, and a general dispo- 
sition was displayed to hang him at once. Sir John 
saved his life by saying to Charles, " I hope your 
majesty will not hang poor George Wither, for as 
long as he lives it can't be said that I am the worst 
poet in England.") 

Literature is full of such facts as at first blush ap- 
pear incredible. Consider, that " although the soil of 
Sweden is not rich in either plants or insects, and 
many of its feathered tribes are but temporary visit- 
ants, leaving it at stated periods in quest of milder 
climes, nevertheless it was amidst this physical bar- 
renness that the taste of Linnaeus for his favorite 
pursuit broke out almost from his earliest infancy, 
and found the means not only of its gratification, but 



MUTATIONS. 239 

of laying a basis of a system which soon spread its 
dominion over the whole world of science. Almost 
within the Arctic circle, this enthusiast of nature felt 
all those inspirations which are generally supposed to 
be the peculiar offspring of warmer regions. He trav- 
eled over the greater part of Lapland, skirting the 
boundaries of Norway, and returning to Upsala by 
the Gulf of Bothnia, having passed over an extent 
of about four thousand miles. Nothing but the en- 
thusiasm of genius would have made him, night and 
day, wade the cold creeks and treacherous bogs, and 
climb the bleak mountains of Lapland — eating little 
but fish, unsalted, and crawling with vermin. He 
considered his labor amply remunerated by the infor- 
mation he had gained, and the discovery of new plants 
in the higher mountains, with the payment of his ex- 
penses, amounting to about ten pounds ! " 

Or reflect, that "on a bulk, in a cellar, or in a 
glass-house, among thieves and beggars, was to be 
found the author of the Wanderer, the man of ex- 
alted sentiments, extensive views, and curious obser- 
vations ; the man whose remarks on life might have 
assisted the statesman, whose ideas of virtue might 
have enlightened the moralist, whose eloquence might 
have influenced senates, and whose delicacy might 
have polished courts." 

And see what Bishop Burnet, in his History of his 
Own Times, says of the vile Lord Rochester : "In 
the last year of his life I was much with him, and 
have writ a book of what passed between him and 
me : I do verily believe he was then so changed that 
if he had recovered he would have made good all his 



240 LIBRARY NOTES. 

resolutions." Of this book, mentioned by the bishop, 
Dr. Johnson said, It is one " which the critic ought 
to read for its eloquence, the philosopher for its argu- 
ments, and the saint for its piety." 

Soame Jenyns, a friend of Johnson and Goldsmith 
and Reynolds, is thus spoken of by Cumberland : " He 
came into your house at the very moment you had put 
upon your card ; he dressed himself to do your party 
honor in all the colors of the jay ; his lace indeed had 
long since lost its lustre, but his coat had faithfully 
retained its cut since the days when gentlemen wore 
embroidered figured velvet, with short sleeves, boot- 
cuffs, and buckram skirts : as nature had cast him in 
the exact mould of an ill-made pair of stiff stays, he 
followed her so close in the fashion of his coat that it 
was doubted if he did not wear them : because he had 
a protuberant wen just under his poll, he wore a wig, 
that did not cover above half his head. His eyes 
were protruded like the eyes of the lobster, who wears 
them at the end of his feelers, and yet there was 
room between one of these and his nose for another 
wen that added nothing to his beauty ; yet I heard 
this good man very innocently remark, when Gibbon 
published his history, that he wondered anybody so 
ugly could write a book ! " 

It has been remarked as an interesting fact, that 
" Wilberforce at the age of twenty-five, and Wendell 
Phillips at the same age, were the two persons who 
seemed the least likely of all their respective contem- 
poraries to become world-renowned as advocates of 
the cause of antislavery. Wilberforce was returned 
to parliament at twenty-one, when, according to his 



MUTATIONS. 241 

biographer, ' lie became the idol of the fashionable 
world, dancing at Almack's, and singing before the 
Prince of Wales.' At twent^^-five, he abandoned his 
gayeties, entered upon a new life, and took up the 
great cause which he advocated during the remainder 
of his long career. Wendell Phillips at the age of 
twenty -two was a Boston lawyer, aristocratic, wealthy, 
handsome, polished, and sought after ; colonel of a 
city militia company, and a lover of blooded horses, of 
fencing and boxing. He was born on Beacon Street, 
and his father was one of the most popular mayors 
Boston ever had. At Harvard University, where he 
griiduated, he was president of the ' exclusive so- 
ciety ' known as the Gentleman's Club, and in fact 
he was the leader of the aristocratic party among the 
students. At twenty-five he abandoned his practice 
of law, gave up the fashionable world, and espoused 
the cause of the slave." 

Robespierre, anarchist and philanthropist, and Fred- 
erick of Prussia, despot and philosopher, were both 
bitter and vitriolic natures ; yet both, in their youth, 
exceeded Exeter Hall itself in their professions of 
universal beneficence. Frederick indeed wrote early 
in life a treatise called the Anti-Machiavel, which was, 
says his biographer, " an edifying homily against ra- 
pacity, perfidy, arbitrary government, unjust war ; in 
short, against almost everything for which its author 
is now remembered among men." 

Hazlitt, in his essay on the Shyness of Scholars, 
makes some striking remarks upon the poet Gray. 
His " diffidence, or fastidiousness, was such as to 
prevent his associating with his fellow-collegians, or 

16 



242 LIBKARY NOTES. 

mingling with the herd, till at length, like the owl, 
shutting himself up from society and daylight, he 
was hunted and hooted at like the owl whenever he 
chanced to appear, and was even assailed and dis- 
turbed in the haunts in which ' he held his solitary 
reign.' He was driven from college to college, and 
was subjected to a persecution the more harassing to 
a person of his indolent and retired habits. But he 
only shrunk the more within himself in consequence, 
read over his favorite authors, corresponded with 
his distant friends, was terrified out of his wits at 
the bare idea of having his portrait prefixed to his 
works, and probably died from nervous agitation at 
the publicity into which his name had been forced by 
his learning, taste, and genius." Such was the author 
/of the immortal Elegy, which Daniel Webster died 
repeating, and of which Wolfe said he would rather 
be the author than be conqueror of Quebec. 

Washington Irving's modesty and diSidence did 
not make him shut '' himself up from society and day- 
light," but it made him a stranger to many of his 
neighbors, and even to the boys about Sunnyside. It 
will be a surprise to many to know that one morning 
he was ordered out of a field he was crossing — be- 
longing to a neighbor of his, a liquor dealer, who 
threatened, if he found the "old vagabond" on his 
premises again, he would set his dogs on him ! It 
will also be a surprise to know that the distinguished 
author of the Sketch Book was a confessed orchard 
thief. Once, when picking up an apple under a tree 
in his own orchard, he was accosted by an urchin of 
the neighborhood, who, not recognizing him as the 



MUTATIONS. 243 

proprietor, offered to sliow him a tree where he could 
" get better apples than those." " But," urged the 
boy, " we must take care that the old man don't see 
us." " I went with him," said Irvii^g, " and we stole 
a dozen of my own apples ! " 



IX. 

PARADOXES. 

Is there anything more curious or strange in fic- 
tion than the simple fact expressed by Thu cydides , 
that ignorance is bold and knowledge reserved? or 
that by Thomas Fuller, that learning has gained 
most by those books by which the printers have lost ? 
or that by Pascal, that it is wonderful a thing so ob- 
vious as the vanity of the world is so little known, 
and that it is a strange and surprising thing to say 
that seeking its honors is a folly ? or that by John 
Selden, that of all actions of a man's life, his mar- 
riage does least concern other people, yet of all 
actions of his life 'tis most meddled with by other 
people ? or that by Goldsmith, that the most delicate 
friendships are always most sensible of the slightest 
invasion, and the strongest jealousy is ever attendant 
on the warmest regard ? And what is more remark- 
able than that labor should be so scarce in China 
that vast tracts of land lie waste because there are no 
laborers to reclaim them? That in the pontifical 
army, not long before Victor Emanuel, Spain — " the 
bones of whose children for centuries had whitened 
every battle-field where she found it necessary to 
defend her religion" — should have been represented 
by but thirty-eight soldiers ; while Holland, " which 



PARADOXES. 245 

protected the Reformation by its Princes of Orange, 
and introduced liberty of religious opinion into the 
modern world," was represented by hundreds and 
hundreds of volunteers? That the best building in 
Iceland should be the jail at Reikiavik (the capital), 
and that during the many years since its erection it 
should never have contained a prisoner ? That in the 
Arctic region a smaller proportion of fuel should be 
consumed than in any other habitable part of the 
globe ? That in the next voyage of the Mayflower 
after carrying the pilgrims (as Monckton Milnes told 
Hawthorne), she should have been engaged in trans- 
porting a cargo of slaves to the West Indies ? That 
the plant papyrus, which gave its name to our word 
paper, — first used for writing between three and four 
thousand years ago, of more importance in history 
than cotton and silver and gold, — once so common in 
Egypt, should have become so scarce there that 
Emerson in his late visit searched in vain for it? 
That house-building, which ought to be among the 
most perfect of the arts, after the experience and 
efforts of myriads in every generation, should have 
produced no stereotyped models of taste and conven- 
ience ? That the founder and editor of one of the 
great London periodicals should never have written a 
line for his journal ? or that when he died the review 
which he had built up by his individual ability 
should not have made the slightest mention of the 
event ? That those three books which have been so 
widely read, and which have exercised incalculable 
influence upon morals and politics, — the Imitation of 
Christ, the Whole Duty of Man, and the Letters of 



r 



246 LIBRARY NOTES. 

Junius, — should be of unknown or disputed author- 
ship ? That the Bible — the incomparably wisest 
and best book, the Book of books, the guide of life, 
the solace in death, the way to heaven — should be 
so little read by the many and so little understood 
by the few ? How difficult it is to realize that Dr. 
Johnson, the great Cham of English literature, spent 
more than one half of his days in penury ; that the 
" moral, pious Johnson," and the " gay, dissipated 
Beauclerc," were companions ; or that they should 
ever have spent a whole day together, " half-seas 
over," wandering through the markets, cracking jokes 
with the fruit and fish women, on their way to 
Billingsgate. It is hard to believe that that great 
moralist ever wandered whole nights through the 
streets of London, with the unfortunate, gifted Savage, 
too miserably poor to hire lodgings. And it is still 
harder to believe that the best biography of that great 
man, and the best biography in our language, was 
written by a gossiping literary bore — the ''bear- 
leader to the Ursa Major," as Irving calls him — 
whom Johnson pretended to despise, and of whom he 
once said, " if he thought Boswell intended to write 
his (Johnson's) life he would take Boswell's." We 
wonder that the great, strong-minded Luther ever 
flung an inkstand at the devil's head. We cannot 
conceive that Wesley and Johnson and Addison be- 
lieved in ghosts. It looks strange to us that Socrates, 
who taught the doctrines of the one Supreme Being 
and the immortality of the soul, should have bowed 
down to a multiplicity of idols ; and after he had 
swallowed the fatal hemlock, should have directed 



PARADOXES. 247 

the sacrifice of a cock to Esculapius. We cannot 
credit the fact that Marlborough, at the moment he 
was the terror of France and the glory of Germany, 
was held under the finger of his wife by the meanest 
of passions, avarice. We utterly refuse to believe the 
complaint of Burns, the greatest of lyric poets, that 
he " could never get the art of commanding respect." 
It seems impossible that Goldsmith should ever have 
" talked like poor Poll," when he " wrote like an 
angel." It appears strange enough that Sir George 
Makenzie should have written an elegant and elo- 
quent treatise in favor of solitude, while living a most 
active life ; and still more strange that his argu- 
ments should have been triumphantly answered by 
Evelyn, who passed his days in tranquillity and soli- 
tude. We believe only when we are compelled by 
authority, that Tycho Brahe, the illustrious astrono- 
mer, changed color, and his legs shook under him, on 
meeting with a hare or a fox. That Dr. Johnson . 
would never enter a room with his left foot fore- / 
most. That Caesar Augustus was almost convulsed 
by the sound of thunder, and always wanted to get 
into a cellar, or under-ground, to escape the dreadful 
noise. That Talleyrand trembled when the word 
death was pronounced. That Marshal Saxe ever 
screamed in terror at the sight of a cat. That Peter 
the Great could never be persuaded to cross a bridge ; 
and though he tried to master the terror, he failed to 
do so. That Byron would never help any one to salt 
at the table, nor be helped himself. That an air 
that was beneficial to Schiller should have acted upon 
Goethe hke poison. (" I called on him one day," 



248 LIBRARY NOTES. 

said Goethe to Soret, " and as I did not find him at 
home, and his wife told me that he would soon return, 
I seated myself at his work-table to note down vari- 
ous matters. I had not been seated long before I 
felt a strange indisposition steal over me, which 
gradually increased, until at last I nearly fainted. At 
first I did not know to what cause I should ascribe 
this wretched and, to me, unusual state, until I dis- 
covered that a dreadful odor issued from a drawer 
near me. When I opened it, I found to my astonish- 
ment that it was full of rotten apples. I immediately 
went to the window and inhaled the fresh air, by 
which I felt myself instantly restored. In the mean 
time his wife had reentered, and told me that the 
drawer was always filled with rotten apples, because 
the scent was beneficial to Schiller, and he could not 
live or work without it.") That Queen Elizabeth 
should have issued proclamations against excessive 
apparel, leaving, as she did, three thousand changes 
of dress in the royal wardrobe. That Bayle, the 
faithful compiler of impurities, should have " resisted 
the corruption of the senses as much as Newton." 
That Smollett, who has so grossly offended decency 
in his novels, should have had so imniaculate a pri- 
vate character. That Cowley, who boasts with so 
much gayety of the versatility of his passion amongst 
so many sweethearts, should have wanted the con- 
fidence even to address one. That Seneca should 
have philosophized so wisely and eloquently upon the 
blessings of poverty and moderate desires, while 
usuriously lending his seven millions, and writing his 
homilies on a table of solid gold. -Tha^ -^ *** Tk . w ^. M >< i^ > 



PARADOXES. 249 

Mopo, " ^ffaDv in his Utopia, cleelftres"- tlicit ' wjj^jjm 
should be punished for his religion^.should" have been 
a fierce^ersee«toT7' Tacking and burning men at the 
s, taSft i Q£ ..hierjegj. That Young, the author of the 
sombre Night Thoughts, was known as the gayest of 
his circle of acquaintance. That MoUere, the famous 
French humorist and writer of comedies, bore himself 
with habitual seriousness and melancholy. That he 
should have married an actress, who made him ex- 
perience all those bitter disgusts and embarrassments 
which he himself played off at the theatre. That the 
cynicism and bitterness exhibited in the writings of 
Rousseau were in consequence of an unfortunate mar- 
riage to an ill-bred, illiterate woman, who ruled him 
as with a rod of iron. That Addison's fine taste in 
morals and in life could suffer the ambition of a court- 
ier to prevail with himself to seek a countess, who 
drove him, we are told, contemptuously into solitude, 
and shortened his days. That the impulsive and 
genial Steele should have married a cold, precise Miss 
Prue, as he called her, from whom he never parted 
without bickerings. That Shenstone, while surround- 
ing himself with the floral beauties of Paradise, 
exciting the envy and admiration and imitation of 
persons of taste throughout England, should have 
lived in utter wretchedness and misery. That Swift, 
with all his resources of wit and wisdom, should have 
died, to use his own language, "in a rage, like a poi- 
soned rat in a hole." That the thoughtful, cast-iron 
essays of John Foster should have been originally 
written as love epistles to the lady who afterward 
became his wife. That the only person who could 



250 LIBRARY NOTES. 

make grave George Washington laugh was an officer 
in the army so obscure in rank and character as not 
to be even mentioned in popular history. That the 
man whom Daniel Webster pronounced the best con- 
versationist he ever knew should be utterly unknown 
or forgotten outside of his neighborhood. That the 
pious Cowper should have attempted suicide ; or that 
he should have had as an intimate associate the 
swearing Lord Chancellor Thurlow — with whom, he 
confesses, he spent three years, " giggling and making 
giggle." That Lord Chancellor Eldon, who, while 
simple John Scott, son of a Newcastle coal-fitter, ran 
away with Bessy Surtees, daughter of a prosperous 
banker of the same town, and who was so proud of 
the exploit that he never tired of referring to it, 
when his eldest daughter. Lady Elizabeth, gave her 
hand, without his consent, to an ardent lover of re- 
spectable character and good education, but not of 
much wealth, should have permitted years to roll 
away before he would forgive her. That not long 
after the elopement referred to, while a law student 
at Oxford, having been appointed to read to the class, 
at a small salary, the lectures of one of the professors 
who was then absent in the East Indies, it should 
have happened that the first lecture he had to read 
was upon the statute (4 & 5 P. M. c, 8) *' Of young 
men running away with maidens." (" Fancy me," he 
said, "reading, with a hundred and forty boys and 
young men all giggling.") That Lord Chancellor 
Thurlow, who was never married at all, should have 
been so outraged at the love marriage, against his con- 
sent, of his third and favorite daughter, that, though 



PARADOXES. 251 

he became reconciled to her, he never would consent 
to see her husband. That, according to John Lord 
Campbell, so many of the most important points in the 
law of real property should have been settled in suits 
upon the construction of the wills of eminent judges. 
That " the religious, the moral, the immaculate " 
Sir Matthew Hale, when chief justice of the king's 
bench, should have allowed the infamous Jeffreys, 
who " was not redeemed from his vices by one single 
solid virtue," to gain, in the opinion of Roger North, 
" as great an ascendant over him as ever counsel had 
over a judge." That the gentle Charles Lamb and 
Mary Lamb should have been confined in a mad- 
house, and the latter have cut the throat of her 
mother at the dinner-table. That Tasso should have 
lamented the publication of Jerusalem Delivered, and 
that its publication should have been the one great 
cause of his insanity. That Thomson, the poet of 
the Seasons, should have composed so much classic 
and vigorous verse in bed ; or that he should have 
been seen in Lord Burlington's garden, with his hands 
in his waistcoat pockets, biting off the sunny sides of 
the peaches. That King Solomon, who wrote so \ 
wisely of training children, should have had so wicked 
a son as Rehoboam. That the good stoic, Marcus [ 
Aurelius, of proverbial purity, should have had so 
doubtful a wife as Faustiana, and so vicious a son as 
Commodus. That that good old Roman emperor, 
whose Meditations rank with the best works of the 
greatest moralists, breathing and inculcating the spirit 
of Christianity, should have been the bitter persecutor 
of the Christians in Gaul. That his graceless heir, 



252 LIBRARY NOTES. 

Commodus, should have left the Christians wholly- 
untroubled, through the influence of his mistress, 
Marcia. That the English-reading world should be 
directly indebted to the Reign of Terror — the hor- 
rors of Robespierre's tyranny — for the most popular 
translation of St. Pierre's sweet story of Paul and 
Virginia. That the author of the Marseillaise 
should have first heard of the great fame of his piece 
in the mountains of Piedmont, when fleeing from 
France as a political refugee. That that ode to tem- 
perance, The Old Oaken Bucket, should have been 
written by Wood worth, a journeyman printer, under 
the inspiration of brandy. That we should owe all 
that remains of Tacitus to a single copy discovered in 
a monastery of Westphalia. That so many of the ex- 
quisite letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu should 
have been destroyed by her mother, who " did not ap- 
prove that she should disgrace her family by adding 
to it literary honors." That the famous speech of 
Pitt, in reply to Walpole's taunt of being " a young 
man," should be the composition of Dr. Johnson. That 
Johnson, looking at Dilly's edition of Lord Chester- 
field's miscellaneous works, should have laughed and 
said, " Here are now two speeches ascribed to him, 
both of which were written by me : and the best of 
it is, they have found out that one is like Demos- 
thenes, and the other like Cicero." That many of 
the sermons of famous contemporaneous clergymen 
were the productions of the same laborious Grub 
Street drudge, forty or more of which have been re- 
claimed and published, now conceded to have been 
written by the inexhaustible Johnson. That the 



PARADOXES. 253 

only paper of the Rambler which had a prosperous 
sale, and may be said to have been popular, was one 
which Johnson did not write — No. 97, written by 
Richardson. That the Ramblers of Dr. Johnson, 
elaborate as they appear, should have been " written 
rapidly, seldom undergoing revision, whilst the simple 
language of Rousseau, which seems to come flowing 
from the heart, was the slow production of painful 
toil, pausing on every word, and balancing every sen- 
tence." That Burke's Reflections on the Revolution 
in France, which has the free and easy flow of extem- 
poraneous eloquence, should have been polished with 
extraordinary care, — more than a dozen proofs being 
worked off and destroyed, according to Dodsley's 
account, before he could please himself. That the 
winged passages in Curran's speeches, which seem 
born of the moment, should have been the results of 
painstaking, protracted labor. (" My dear fellow," 
said he to Phillips, " the day of inspiration has gone 
by. Everything I ever said which was worth re- 
membering, my de bene esses, my white horses, as I 
call them, were all carefully prepared.") That the 
Essay on Man, according to Lord Bathurst, '* was 
originally composed by Lord Bolingbroke, in prose, and 
Pope did no more than to put it into verse." That 
those brilliant wits and prolific dramatists, Peele, 
Greene, and Marlowe, the associates of SJiake- 
speare, to whom the great dramatist was so much in- 
debted, should all have been wretched and unsuc- 
cessful, — the first dying in utter want, the second of 
excessive pickled herring, at the point nearly of star- 
vation, the third being ' stabbed in the head in a 



254 LIBRARY NOTES. 

drunken brawl at a tavern by his own dagger in Ms 
own hand. That Shakespeare should have married 
at eighteen, had three children at twenty, removed 
to London at twenty-three, begun writing plays at 
twenty-seven, and, a little more than twenty years 
after, returned to his native town, rich and immortal. 
That but a few signatures — differently spelled — 
should be all of his handwriting that has been pre- 
served. That so many critics should believe, and 
some ingenious books have been printed to prove, 
that the authorship of the plays of Shakespeare 
belongs to Bacon — the only man then living, they 
claim, who knew enough to write them. That the 
great Bacon should have been unable to grasp the 
great discoveries of his time — rejecting the Coper- 
nican system to the last, and treating not only with 
incredulity, but with the most arrogant contempt, 
the important discoveries of Gilbert about the mag- 
net. That Apuleius, author of the Metamorphosis of 
the Golden Ass (a paraphrase, according to Bayle, 
of what he had taken from Lucian, as Lucian had 
taken it from Lucius, one of the episodes of which — 
Psyche — furnished Moliere with matter for one of 
his dramas, and La Fontaine materials for a ro- 
mance), who did not, to use his own language, 
" make the least scruple of expending his whole 
fortune in acquiring what he believed to be more 
valuable, a contempt of it," should have afterward 
married a woman more than twice his own age, thir- 
teen years a widow, to procure for himself, as he 
acknowledged, " a large settlement, and an easy con- 
dition of life." That Pythagoras, the first of the 



PARADOXES. 255 

ancient sages who took the name of philosopher; 
who made himself so illustrious by his learning and 
virtue ; who proved so useful in reforming and in- 
structing the world; whose eloquence moved the 
inhabitants of a great city, plunged in debauchery, to 
avoid luxury and good cheer, and to live according to 
the rules of virtue ; who prevailed upon the ladies to 
part with their fine clothes, and all their ornaments, 
and to make a sacrifice of them to the chief deity of 
the place ; who engaged his disciples to practice the 
most difficult things, making them undergo a novi- 
tiate of silence for at least two years, and extending 
it to five years for those whom he knew to be more 
inclined to speak, — should have peremptorily ordered 
his disciples to abstain from eating beans, choosing 
himself rather, as some authorities have it, to be 
killed by those that pursued him, than to make his 
escape through a field of beans, so great was his 
respect or abhorrence of that plant. That Luther, 
the greatest of the reformers, and Baxter, the great- 
est of the Puritans, and Wesley, the greatest religious 
leader of the last century, should have believed in 
witchcraft. That Dr. Johnson should have thought 
Swift's reputation greater than he deserved, question- 
ing his humor, and denying him the authorship of the 
Tale of a Tub, at the same time taking to his con- 
fidence, and reverencing for his piety, George Psal- 
manazar, who deceived the world for some time by 
pretending to be a native of the island of Formosa, 
to support which he invented an alphabet and a 
grammar. (" I should," said Johnson, " as soon 
think of contradicting a bishop.") That Coleridge 



256 LIBRARY NOTES. 

should have been able, according to Freiligrath, to 
depict Mont Blanc and the Vale of Chamouni at 
sunrise in such an overpowering manner, though he 
had never seen the Alps ; while half-Oriental Malta 
and classical Italy, both of which he had seen, gave 
him no fruits of poetry. That Schiller should have 
written his William Tell without ever seeing any of 
the glories of Lake Lucerne. That Vathek, that 
splendid Oriental tale, should have been written by a 
young man of twenty-two who had never visited the 
countries whose manners he so vividly described ; and 
that " of all the glories and prodigalities of the En- 
glish Sardanapalus, his slender romance, the work of 
three days, is the only durable memorial." That 
Beckford's father, while Lord Mayor of London, 
should have become especially famous for a speech 
that was never delivered — the speech in reply to the 
king, written after the event by Home Tooke, and 
engraved on the pedestal of a statue of Beckford 
erected in Guildhall. That Michel Angelo, unex- 
pectedly, should have laid the first stone of the 
Reformation. (History tells us that Julius II. gave 
him an unlimited commission to make a mausoleum, 
in which their mutual interests should be combined. 
The artist's plan was a parallelogram, and the super- 
structure was to consist of forty statues, many of 
which were to be colossal, and interspersed with orna- 
mental figures and bronze basso-rilievos, besides the 
necessary architecture, with appropriate decorations 
to unite the composition into one stupendous whole. 
To make a fitting place for it, the pope determined 
to rebuild St. Peter's itself ; and this is the origin of 



PARADOXES. 257 

that edifice, wliicli took a hundred and fifty years to 
complete, and is now the grandest display of archi- 
tectural splendor that ornaments the Christian world. 
" To prosecute the undertaking, money was wanted, 
and indulgences were sold to supply the deficiency of 
the treasury ; and a monk of Saxony, opposing the 
authority of the church, produced this singular event, 
that whilst the most splendid edifice which the world 
had ever seen was building for the .Catholic faith, 
the religion to which it was consecrated was shaken 
to its foundation.'') That Bruce, the traveler, 
after all his perils by flood and by field, from wars, 
from wild beasts, from deserts, from savage natives, 
should have broken his neck down his own staircase 
at home, owing to a slip of the foot, while seeing 
some visitors out whom he had been entertaining. 
That Diogenes, who was so fond of expressing his 
contempt for money, should, in his younger days, 
have been driven out of the kingdom of Pontus for 
counterfeiting the coin. That the mighty Dr. John- 
son should at times have been so languid as not to be 
able to distinguish the hour upon the clock ; or that 
the ready and voluminous De Quincey, during the 
four years he was '' under the Circean spells of 
opium," seldom could prevail on himself, he said, to 
write even a letter ; an answer of a few words to 
any that he received was the utmost that he could 
accomplish ; and that, often, not until the letter had 
lain weeks, or even months, on his writing-desk. 
That out of the name of Epicurus should have been 
coined a synonym for indulgence and sensuality, 
when that virtuous philosopher "placed his felicity 
17 



258 LIBRARY NOTES. 

not in the pleasures of the body, but the mind, and 
tranquillity thereof ; " who " was contented with 
bread and water ; " and when he would feast with 
Jove, " desired no other addition than a piece of 
Cytheridian cheese." That Phidias should have 
made his sitting statue of Jupiter so large " that if 
he had risen up he had borne up the top of the tem- 
ple." That Canova, whenever the conversation turned 
upon sculpture, should have exhibited " a freshly- 
bedaubed tablet," " with a smile of paternal pride." 
That Goethe should have undervalued himself as a 
poet, claiming only superiority over his " century " 
in " the difficult science of colors." That Jerrold 
should have been ambitious to write a treatise on 
natural philosophy. That Paul Jones, the " hero of 
desperate sea-fights," should have been enamored 
of Thomson's Seasons. That Bonaparte, who " over- 
ran Europe with his armies," should have " recreated 
himself with the wild rhapsodies of Ossian." That 
John Wesley, who " set all in motion," should 
have been himself (as described by Robert Hall) 
" perfectly calm and phlegmatic " — "the quiescence 
of turbulence." That Persius, whose satires are 
most licentious, sharp, and full of bitterness, should 
be described as "very chaste, though a beautiful 
young man : sober, as meek as a lamb, and as modest 
as a young virgin." That Luis de Camoens, the great- 
est of the Portuguese poets, author of The Lusiad, or 
Os Lusiadas, should for a long time have been sup- 
ported by a devoted Javanese servant, Antonio, who 
collected alms for him during the night, and nursed 
him -during the day. That Paulo Borghese, pro- 



PARADOXES. 259 

nounced almost as good a poet as Tasso, should have 
known fourteen different trades, yet have died be- 
cause he could get employment in none. That Ben- 
tivoglio, " whose comedies will last with the Italian 
language," having dissipated a noble fortune in acts 
of charity and benevolence, and fallen into misery in 
his old age, should have been refused admittance into 
a hospital which he himself had erected. That 
Demosthenes should have thrown " down his arms 
when he came within sight of the enemy, and lost 
that credit in the camp which he gained in the pul- 
pit." That " Socrates, by the oracle adjudged to be 
the wisest of mortals, when he appeared in the at- 
tempt of some public performance before the people," 
should have " faltered in the first onset ; " he " did 
not recover himself, but was hooted and hissed home 
again." That Plato, the famous philosopher, should 
have been " so dashed out of countenance by an illit- 
erate rabble as to demur, and hawk, and hesitate, 
before he could get to the end of one short sentence." 
That Theophrastus should have been " such another 
coward, who beginning to make an oration was pres- 
ently struck down with fear, as if he had seen some 
ghost or hobgoblin." That Isocrates should have been 
" so bashful and timorous, that though he taught rhet- 
oric, yet he could never have the confidence to speak 
in public." That Cicero, that master of Roman elo- 
quence, should have " begun his speeches with a low, 
quivering voice, just like a school-boy afraid of not 
saying his lesson perfect enough to escape whipping." 
That Pope, who had the courage in his Dunciad to 
attack a whole generation of scholars and wits, should 



260 LIBRARY NOTES. 

have acknowledged his mability to face a half-dozen 
persons to make a statement or relate an incident of 
considerable length. That Plutarch, the great biog- 
rapher, should be without a biography, — none of 
the eminent Roman writers who were his contem- 
poraries even mention his name. That of Correggio, 
who delineated the features of others so well, there 
should not exist an authentic portrait. That of 
Romanianus, whom Augustine speaks of as the great- 
est genius that ever lived, there should be nothing 
known but his name. That though the epitaph of 
Gordianus was written in five languages, it proved 
insufficient to save him from oblivion. That Domi- 
tian, after he had possessed himself of the Roman 
Empire, should have turned his desires upon catching 
flies. That Robert Burns, the sweetest of all the 
Scottish song-writers, should in early life have been 
thought to be insensible to music. (Murdock, the 
teacher of Burns and his brother Gilbert, says that 
he '' tried to teach them a little sacred music, but 
found this impracticable, there being no music in 
either of their souls. As for Robert, his ear was so 
completely dull that he could not distinguish one 
tune from another, and his voice was so untunable 
that he could not frame a note, and was left behind 
by all the boys and girls of the school.") That Sir 
Isaac Newton, according to Spence, though so deep 
in algebra and fluxions, could not readily make up a 
common account, and whilst he was master of the 
mint, used to get somebody to make up the account 
for him. That Socrates, according to Plato, should 
have given occasion of laughter, at the expense of his 



PARADOXES. 261 

own reputation, to the Athenians, for having never 
been able to sum up the votes of his tribe to deliver 
it to the council. That Prime Minister Gladstone, 
upon being asked how he employed his mind when 
duty compelled him to sit on the bench of the minis- 
ters while a tory was delivering himself of a dull 
three hours' harangue, should have made answer, 

" Last evening, when Mr. was speaking, I turned 

Rock of Ages into the Greek, and had half an hour 
to spare." That the great and wise and pious Chal- 
mers should so far have adopted and become im- 
pressed with the views of Malthus as to urge the 
expediency of a restraint upon marriage, and that the 
same be "inculcated upon the people as the very 
essence of morality and religion by every pastor and 
instructor throughout England." That The Admi- 
rable Crichton, master of a dozen languages, after 
disputing for six hours with eminent doctors of 
Padua on topics of science, delighting the assembly as 
much by his modesty as by his wonderful learning 
and judgment, should, at the conclusion, have given 
an extemporaneous oration in praise of ignorance 
with so much ingenuity that he reconciled his audi- 
ence to their inferiority. That the Duke of Marl- 
borough, who, while an ensign of guards, received 
from the Duchess of Cleveland, then favorite mis- 
tress of Charles II., five thousand pounds, with 
which he bought an annuity for his life of five hun- 
dred pounds, — the foundation of his subsequent for- 
tune, — should afterward, when he was famous as 
well as rich, and the duchess was poor and neces- 
sitous, have " refused the common civility of lending 



262 LIBRAE Y NOTES. 

her twenty guineas." That although Sir Isaac New- 
ton told Mr. Conduit that he " excelled particularly 
in making verses," no authentic specimen of his 
poetry has been preserved. That the first public 
speech of John Randolph, three hours in length, and 
which established his reputation as an orator, should 
have been made in reply to the last ever delivered by 
the venerable Patrick Henry, — the former in his 
twenty-sixth year, a self-announced candidate for 
Congress, and the latter in his sixty-third year, the 
candidate of George Washington for a place in the 
Virginia legislature. That but a few years after 
John Brown's defeat and execution in Virginia, 
Congress should have enacted a law and the presi- 
dent approved it, by which a portion of the Harper's 
Ferry buildings, including the famous engine-house, 
so nobly defended by the old hero, and to capture 
which from his little garrison Robert E. Lee and the 
United States marines had to be sent for, was pre- 
sented by the government as a free gift to the Storer 
College, an institution expressly designed for the 
education of colored men. That Henry A. Wise, 
who, as governor of Virginia, hung John Brown, 
should a few years after have fled Richmond, the 
capital of Virginia, at the head of a Confederate divis- 
ion of white troops, closely followed by a division of 
loyal black troops, singing, " John Brown's body lies 
mouldering in the grave, but his soul is marching 
on." That a daughter of John Brown should have 
taught a free school of emancipated slave children in 
the deserted drawing-room of Henry A. Wise. That 
about the same time, at Lumpkin's Jail, which was 



PARADOXES. 263 

tlie slave-market, there should have been established 
a theological seminary for colored young men. That 
at the same time, also, Richard Realf, one of John 
Brown's trusted men, should have been appointed 
assessor of internal revenue for the district of 
Edgefield, South Carolina. That the first Confeder- 
ate officer in South Carolina who officially met an 
officer of colored troops under a flag of truce should 
have been Captain John C. Calhoun. That one 
of Jefferson Davis's old slaves should have become a 
lessee of Jefferson Davis's old plantation. That 
Foote, the celebrated actor, should have died with 
the dropsy, never in his life, as he said, having drank 
a drop of water. That the great Neander, some- 
times called the " second John," — " the son of thun- 
der and the son of love," — should have had his mind 
first turned in the direction in which he afterward 
found truth and peace, by a passage in Plutarch's 
Pedagogue. That Plutarch, who wrote so volumi- 
nously and excellently upon morals, great personages, 
and great influences, should have made no mention 
in any of his books of Christ or Christianity. ("If 
we place his birth," says Archbishop Trench, " at 
about the year A. D. 50, then long before he began 
to write, St. Peter and St. Paul must have finished 
their course. All around him — at Rome, where he 
dwelt so long ; in that Greece where the best part of 
his life was spent ; in Asia Minor, with which Greece 
was in constant communication ; in Macedonia — there 
were flourishing churches. Christianity was every- 
where in the air, so that men unconsciously inhaled 
some of its influences, even where they did not sub- 



264 LIBRARY NOTES. 

mit themselves to its positive teaching. But for all 
this, no word, no allusion of Plutarch's testifies to his 
knowledge of the existence of these churches, or to 
the slightest acquaintance on his part with the 
Christian books." Suetonius, a contemporary of 
Plutarch, calls the Christians " a sort of people who 
held a new and impious superstition." Pliny, another 
contemporary, pronounces the Christian religion " a 
depraved, wicked, and outrageous superstition ; " Taci- 
tus, " a foreign and deadly superstition.") That John 
Stuart Mill, who found time and space in his auto- 
biography to make careful lists of the incredible 
number of books he read between the ages of three 
and fourteen, to note the languages and sciences he 
acquired in the same time, as well as his associations 
and relations with his father, his brothers, and his 
sisters ; who accepted his wife, during her life-time, 
as his divinity, and, after her death, confessed her 
memory to have been his religion, — should have 
omitted to say one word about his mother. That 
Jonathan Edwards, the great theologian and thinker, 
should never have had the degree of doctor of divinity 
or doctor of laws conferred on him, while they were 
showered on scores of his commonplace contempora- 
ries. That Sir John Suckling and Richard Lovelace, 
so famous as courtiers and poet cavaliers, the pets of 
the king and the people, the much admired and 
adored by the female sex, should have died in wretch- 
edness and despair, — the former taking poison, and 
the latter dying in rags in a miserable alley in Lon- 
don. That Milton, advanced in years, blind, and in 
misfortune, should have entered upon the composition 



PARADOXES. 265 

of his immortal epic, achieving it in six years; and 
that Scott, at nearly the same age, his private affairs 
in ruin, should have undertaken to liquidate, by intel- 
lectual labors alone, a debt of more than half a mill- 
ion of dollars, nearly accomplishing it in the same 
time. That Dr. Lardner, who published a treatise to 
prove that a steamboat could never cross the Atlantic 
(the steamship Sirius, which crossed soon after, car- 
rying over his pamphlet), should also have staked his 
reputation as a man of science to a committee of the 
House of Commons that no railway train could ever 
be propelled faster than ten miles in an hour, and 
that the slightest curve would infallibly throw it off 
the rails. That Babinet, the French calculator, should 
also have risked his reputation upon the declaration 
that no telegram would ever be transmitted through 
the Atlantic to America. That Renous, a German 
collector in natural history, having left in a house 
in San Fernandino, Chili, some caterpillars under 
charge of a girl to feed that they might turn into 
butterflies, should have been arrested upon returning 
to the house, his extraordinary conduct having been 
rumored through the town till it reached the padres 
and governor, who consulted together and deter- 
mined to punish the pernicious heresy. That Socrates 
should have learned music, Cato the Greek language, 
Plutarch Latin, and Dr. Johnson Dutch, after they 
were seventy years old. That Robert Hall should 
have sought relief in Dante from the racking pains 
of spinal disease ; and that Sydney Smith should 
have resorted to the same poet for comfort and solace 
in his old age. That De Foe, the author of two hun- 
dred and ten books and pamphlets, should have died 



266 LIBRARY NOTES. 

insolvent. That Sheridan should have got Woodfall to 
insert in his paper a calumnious article, and neglected 
to answer it afterward, as he intended — expending, 
according to Moore, all his activity in assisting the 
circulation of the poison, and not having industry- 
enough left to supply the antidote. That Hugh 
Miller, who had such healthy views of life, as shown 
in his autobiography, should have voluntarily left it 
by means of a pistol. That Lloyd, one of the early 
friends and literary associates of Lamb and Coleridge, 
should have taken lodgings at a working brazier's 
shop in Fetter Lane, to distract his mind from mel- 
ancholy and postpone his madness. That Hazlitt 
should have said that Mary Lamb was the wisest and 
most rational woman he had ever known. That Pro- 
fessor Wilson, soon after he was selected to fill the 
moral philosophy chair at Edinburgh, and the poet 
Campbell, should have been seen one morning leav- 
ing a tavern in that city, both " haggard and red- 
eyed, hoarse and exhausted, having sat tete-a-tete for 
twenty-four hours discussing poetry and wine to the 
top of their bent." That Richard Baxter, the stern 
Calvinist, and author of one huftdred and sixty-eight 
works upon theology, should have written at the end 
of his long life, " I now see more good and more 
evil in all men than heretofore I did. I see that 
good men are not so good as I once thought they 
were, and I find that few are so bad as either mali- 
cious enemies or censorious separating professors do 
imagine." That Theodore de Beza, the apostle of 
John Calvin, should have put to press at the same 
time his coarse amorous poems (Juvenilia) and his 
intolerant apology for the trial and execution of Ser- 



PARADOXES. 267 

vetus. That " the mighty Dr. Hill, who was not a 
very delicate feeder, could not make a dinner out of 
the press till by a happy transformation into Hannah 
Glass he turned himself into a cook, and sold receipts 
for made dishes to all the savory readers in the king- 
dom — the press then acknowledging him second in 
favor only to John Bunyan ; his feasts kept pace in 
sale with Nelson's fasts, and when his own name was 
fairly written out of credit, he wrote himself into im- 
mortality under an alias." That Madame de Mon- 
tespan, who found it " for her interest and vanity to 
live in habitual violation of the seventh command- 
ment," should have been so rigorous in her devotions 
as to weigh her bread in Lent. That Cardinal Bernis, 
"the most worthless of abbds," who owed his ad- 
vancement in the church to Madame de Pompadour, 
the most worthless of women, should have refused 
" to communicate in the dignity of the purple with a 
woman of so unsanctimonious a character." That 
Rousseau, " whose preaching made it fashionable for 
women of rank to nurse their own children," should 
have " sent his own, as soon as born, to the foundling 
hospital." That Coleridge and Goldsmith should 
have written The House that Jack Built and Goody 
Two Shoes : more than all it is curious, and wonder- 
ful, that these two simple trifles seem destined to 
outlive their more elaborate productions — the An- 
cient INIariner and the Vicar of Wakefield. Christa- 
bel and the Deserted Village may hardly be preserved 
amongst the curiosities of literature, when the famous 
nursery rhymes — joyously ringing upon the tongues 
of silver- voiced children — will be immortally fresh 
and new. 



X. 

CONTRASTS. 

The world will never be tired reading and talking 
of the peculiarities and struggles of some of its lit- 
erary worthies, they seem so incredible. Poor Gold»- 
smith, for example : every incident relating to him is 
interesting, even if colored by envy — as most of 
the contemporaneous gossip about him was. " I first 
met Goldsmith," says Cumberland, "at the British 
Coffee House. He dined with us as a visitor, intro- 
duced by Sir Joshua Reynolds, and we held a consul- 
tation upon the naming of his comedy, which some of 
the company had read, and which he detailed to the 
rest after his manner with a great deal of good-humor. 
Somebody suggested She Stoops to Conquer, and that 

title was agreed upon ' You and I,' said he, 

'have very different motives for resorting to the 
stage. I write for money, and care little about fame.' 
.... The whole company pledged themselves to 
the support of the poet, and faithfully kept their 
promise to him. In fact, he needed all that could 
be done for him, as Mr. Colman, then manager of 
Covent Garden Theatre, protested against the com- 
edy, when as yet he had not struck upon a name 
for it. Johnson at length stood forth in all his ter- 
ror, as champion for the piece, and backed by us, his 



CONTRASTS. 269 

clients and retainers, demanded a fair trial. Colman 
again protested, but, with that salvo for his own rep- 
utation, liberally lent his stage to one of the most 
eccentric productions that ever found its way to it, 
and She Stoops to Conquer was put into rehearsal. 
We were not over-sanguine of success, but perfectly 
determined to struggle hard for our author ; we ac- 
cordingly assembled our strength at the Shakespeare 
Tavern in a considerable body for an early dinner, 
where Samuel Johnson took the chair at the head of 
a long table, and was the life and soul of the corps : 
the poet took post silently by his side, with the 
Burkes, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Fitzherbert, Caleb 
Whitefoord, and a phalanx of North British prede- 
termined applauders, under the banner of Major 
Mills, all good men and true. Our illustrious pres- 
ident was in inimitable glee, and poor Goldsmith 
that day took all his raillery as patiently and com- 
placently as my friend Boswell would have done any 
day or every day of his life. In the mean time, we 
did not forget our duty, and though we had a better 
comedy going, in which Johnson was chief actor, we 
betook ourselves in good time to our separate and 
allotted posts, and waited the awful drawing up of 
the curtain. As our stations were preconcerted, so 
were our signals for plaudits arranged and deter- 
mined upon in a manner that gave every one his 
cue where to look for them and how to follow them 
up. We had amongst us a very worthy and sufficient 
member, long since lost to his friends and the world 
at large, Adam Drummond, of amiable memory, who 
was gifted by nature with the most sonorous, and, at 



270 LIBRAKY NOTES. 

the same time, the most contagious, laugh that ever 
echoed from the human lungs. The neighing of the 
horse of the son of Hystaspes was a whisper to it ; 
the whole thunder of the theatre could not drown it. 
This kind and ingenuous friend fairly forewarned us 
that he knew no more when to give his fire than the 
cannon did that was planted on a battery. He de- 
sired, therefore, to have a flapper at his elbow, and I 
had the honor to be deputed to that office. I planted 
him in an upper box, pretty nearly over the stage, in 
full view of the pit and galleries, and perfectly well 
situated to give the echo all its play through the hol- 
lows and recesses of the theatre. The success of our 
manoeuvres was complete. All eyes were upon John- 
son, who sat in a front row of a side box, and when 
he laughed everybody thought themselves warranted 
to roar. In the mean time, my friend followed sig- 
nals with a rattle so irresistibly comic that, when he 
had repeated it several times, the attention of the 
spectators was so engrossed by his person and per- 
formances that the progress of the play seemed likely 
to become a secondary object, and I found it prudent 
to insinuate to him that he might halt his music with- 
out a^ny prejudice to the author ; but, alas, it was 
now too late to rein him in ; he had laughed upon 
my signal where he found no joke, and now unluckily 
he fancied that he found a joke in almost everything 
that was said ; so that nothing in nature could be 
more malapropos than some of his bursts every now 
and then were. These were dangerous moments, for 
the pit began to take umbrage ; but we carried our 
play through, and triumphed not only over Colman's 



CONTRASTS. 271 

judgment, but our own." It is related that Gold- 
smith, during the performance of the comedy, walked 
all the time in St. James's Park, in great uneasiness ; 
and when he thought it must be over, he hastened to 
the theatre. His ears were assailed with hisses as he 
entered the green-room, when he eagerly inquired of 
Mr. Colman the cause. " Psha ! psha I " said Col- 
man, " don't be afraid of squibs, when we have been 
sitting on a barrel of gunpowder these two hours." 
The fact was, that the comedy had been completely 
successful, and that it was the farce which had ex- 
cited those sounds so terrific to Goldsmith. 

A scene very different from that occurred at an- 
other "first acting" — as remarkable if not as fa- 
mous. It was on the occasion of the first presentation 
of Lamb's farce of Mr. H., thirty years later, at Drury 
Lane. That acute dramatic scholar and critic had 
written a tragedy, — John Woodvil, — the fate of 
which his friend Procter has pleasantly narrated: 
" It had been in Mr. Kemble's hands for about a 
year, and Lamb naturally became urgent to hear his 
decision upon it. Upon applying for this he found 
that his play was — lost ! This was at once acknowl- 
edged, and a ' courteous request made for another 
copy, if I had one by me.' Luckily, another copy 
existed. The ' first runnings ' of a genius were not, 
therefore, altogether lost, by having been cast, with- 
out a care, into the dusty limbo of the theatre. The 
other copy was at once supplied, and the play very 
speedily rejected. It was afterwards facetiously 
brought forward in one of the early numbers of 
the Edinburgh Review, and there noticed as a rude 



272 LIBRAEY NOTES. 

specimen of tlie earliest age of the drama, ' older than 
^schylus.'" But the condemnation of his tragedy 
did not discourage him ; he now tried his genius upon 
a farce. Its acceptance, Talfourd says, gave Lamb 
some of the happiest moments he ever spent. He 
wrote joyously to Wordsworth about it, even carry- 
ing his humorous anticipations so far as to indulge in 
a draft of the " orders " he should send out to his 
friends after it had had a successful run: "Admit 
to Boxes. Mr. H. Ninth Night. Charles Lamb." 
Hear what he says about it to his friend Manning, 
then in China : " The title is Mr. H., no more ; how 
simple, how taking! A great H — sprawling over 
the play-bill, and attracting eyes at every corner. 
The story is a coxcomb appearing at Bath, vastly 
rich — all the ladies dying for him — all bursting 
to know who he is — but he goes by no other 
name than Mr. H. ; a curiosity like that of the 
dames of Strasburg about the man with the great 
nose. But I won't tell you any more about it. 
Yes, I will ; but I can't give you any idea how 
I have done it. I '11 just tell you that after much 
vehement admiration, when his true name comes 
out, — ' Hogsflesh ' — all the women shun him, 
avoid him, and not one can be found to change her 
name for him — that 's the idea ; how flat it is 
here, but how whimsical in the farce! And only 
think, how hard upon me it is that the ship is dis- 
patched to-morrow, and my triumph cannot be as- 
certained till the Wednesday after ; but all China 

will ring of it by and by I shall get two 

hundred pounds from the theatre if Mr. H. has a 



CONTRASTS. 273 

good run, and I hope one liimdred pounds for the 

copyright Mary and I are to sit next the 

orchestra in the pit, next the dweedle dees." The 
Wednesday came, the wished-for evening, which de- 
cided the fate of Mr. H. '' Great curiosity," says Tal- 
fourd, " was excited by the announcement ; the house 
was crowded to the ceiling, and the audience impa- 
tiently awaited the conclusion of the long, intolerable 
opera by which it was preceded. At length the hero 
of the farce entered, gayly dressed, and in happiest 
spirits, — enough, not too much, elated, — and deliv- 
ered the prologue with great vivacity and success. 
The farce began ; at first it was much applauded ; 
but the wit seemed wire-drawn ; and when the cur- 
tain fell on the first act, the friends of the author 
began to fear. The second act dragged heavily on, 
as second acts of farces will do ; a rout at Bath, 
peopled with ill-dressed and over-dressed actors and 
actresses, increased the disposition to yawn ; and 
when the moment of disclosure came, and nothing 
worse than the name Hogsflesh was heard, the 
audience resented the long play on their curi- 
osity, and would hear no more. Lamb, with his 
sister, sat, as he anticipated, in the front of the pit ; 
and having joined in encoring the epilogue, the brill- 
iancy of which injured the farce, he gave way with 
equal pliancy to the common feeling, and hissed and 
hooted as loudly as any of his neighbors ! " Away 
went the poet's fame, and the hoped-for three hun- 
dred pounds ! Not even the autocratic countenance 
of Johnson, and the big, contagious laugh of Drum- 
mond, could have saved them. The next morning's 
18 



274 LIBRARY NOTES. 

play-bill contained a veracious announcement, that 
" the new farce of Mr. H., performed for the first 
time last night, was received by an overflowing audi- 
ence with universal applause, and will be repeated for 
the second time to-morrow ; " but the stage lamps 
never that morrow saw ! An amusing, sad spectacle 
the whole thing was ; Lamb, especially, — the dra- 
matic scholar, critic, and wit, the theatre-goer, the as- 
sociate of playwrights and actors, — hissing and hoot- 
ing his own bantling ! In a letter afterward to Man- 
ning, he labors to be amusing over the catastrophe 
in this ghastly and extravagant manner : " So I go 
creeping on since I was lamed by that cursed fall from 
off the top of Drury Lane Theatre into the pit, some- 
thing more than a year ago. However, I have been 
free of the house ever since, and the house was pretty 
free with me upon that occasion. Hang 'em, how 
they hissed ! It was not a hiss neither, but a sort of 
a frantic yell, like a congregation of mad geese ; with 
roaring sometimes like bears ; mows and mops like 
apes ; sometimes snakes, that hissed me into mad- 
ness. 'Twas like St. Anthony's temptations. Mercy 
on us ! that God should give his favorite children, 
men, mouths to speak with, to discourse rationally, to 
promise smoothly, to flatter agreeably, to encourage 
warmly, to counsel wisely, to sing with, to drink with, 
and to kiss with, and that they should turn them 
into mouths of adders, bears, wolves, hyenas, and 
whistle like tempests, and emit breath through them 
like distillations of aspic poison, to asperse and vilify 
the innocent labors of their fellow-creatures who are 
desirous to please them ! Heaven be pleased to make 



CONTRASTS. 275 

tlie teetli rot out of them all, therefore ! Make them 
a reproach, and all that pass by them to loll out their 
tongues at them ! Blind mouths ! as Milton some- 
where calls them." 

Poor Elia ! Of crazy stock, himself in a mad- 
house for six weeks at the end of his twentieth year, 
his sister insane at intervals throughout her life, his 
mother hopelessly bed-ridden till killed by her daugh- 
ter in a fit of frenzy, his father pitifully imbecile, his 
old maiden aunt home from a rich relation's to be 
nursed till she died — all dependent upon him, his 
more prosperous brother declining to bear any part of 
the burden ; his work for more than thirty years mo- 
notonous, and most of it performed at the same desk 
in the same back office, pinched all the time by pov- 
erty, with no ear for music, the list of his few friends, 
to use his own words, " in the world's eye, a ragged 
regiment," — including the poet Lloyd, who died in- 
sane, and the scholar Dyer, who was so absent- 
minded as at one time to empty the contents of his 
snuff-box into the tea-pot when he was preparing 
breakfast for a hungry friend, at another, ' with staff 
in hand, and at noonday," to walk straight into the 
river, — the humor, we say, of dear, wretched, gen- 
tle Charles Lamb must stand a wonder in English 
literature. 

Not less incredible was the steady growth of the 
prodigious genius of Charlotte Bronte, under circum- 
stances hardly less awfully depressing. Think of the 
woful life of that suffering prodigy, in that cheerless 
village of forbidding stone houses, whose grim archi- 
tecture illustrated the rigid hardness of their inhab- 



276 LIBRARY NOTES. 

itants. Above, below, all around, were rocks and 
moors, " where neither flowers nor vegetables would 
flourish, and where even a tree of moderate dimen- 
sions might be hunted far and wide ; where the snow 
lay long and late ; and where often, on autumnal and 
winter nights, the four winds of heaven seemed to 
meet and rage together, tearing round the houses as 
if they were wild beasts striving to find an entrance." 
Stone dikes were used in place of hedges. The cold 
parsonage, at the top of the one desolate street, with 
its stone stairs and stone floors in the passages and 
parlors, was surrounded on three sides by the " great 
old church-yard," which was " terribly full of upright 
tombstones," and which poisoned the water-springs of 
the pumps. The funeral bells, tolling, tolling, and 
the " chip, chip " of the mason, as he cut the grave- 
stones in a shed close by, were habitual sounds. The 
pews in the old church " were of black oak, with high 
divisions, with the names of the owners painted in 
white letters on the doors." Her father, the clergy- 
man, harsh, hard, and unsocial ; at all times denying 
flesh food to his puny children ; at dinner permitting 
them only potatoes, and rarely or never taking his 
meals with them ; with a temper so violent and dis- 
trustful as to cause him always to carry a pistol, which 
he was in the habit of discharging from an upper 
window whenever in a fit of passion ; who burned the 
little colored shoes of his children, presented by their 
mother's cousin, lest they should foster a love of 
dress ; who cut in strips the silk gown of his wife be- 
cause its color was not suited to his puritanical taste 
— at the time, too, when she was slowly dying of an 



CONTRASTS. 277 

internal cancer. Sent from home to be educated at a 
miserable school provided for the daughters of clergy- 
men, where were bad air and bad food, an experience 
which caused the speedy death of both her elder sisters. 
So short-sighted that " she always seemed to be seek- 
ing something, moving her head from side to side to 
catch a sight of it." Having no visitors ; visiting, 
during her childhood, but at one house, and that for 
but a short time. Her only intimate associates her 
two younger sisters. Wonderful trio I " At nine 
o'clock they put away their work, and began to pace 
the room backward and forward, up and down, over 
the stone floors, — as often with the candles extin- 
guished, for economy's sake, as not, — their figures 
glancing in the firelight, and out into the shadow, per- 
petually. At this time they talked over past cares 
and troubles ; they planned for the future, and con- 
sulted each other as to their plans. In after years, 
this was the time for discussing together the plots of 
their novels. And again, still later, this was the time 
for the last surviving sister (Charlotte) to walk alone, 
from old accustomed habit, round and round the des- 
olate room, thinking sadly upon the ' days that were 
no more.' " Is there anything in books more sad and 
touching ? Her only pet was a fierce bull-dog, and 
her only male associate her brilliant, drunken brother 
(who willfully died upon his feet, in an upright posi- 
tion, to fulfill an oft-declared purpose), a continual 
disgrace and terror as long as he lived. And much 
of the time, poor thing, in an agony about the fate of 
her soul ! How the little, pinched victim of all this 
misery and wretchedness could have written a narra- 



278 LIBRARY NOTES. 

tive which at once took its place, in spite of faithless 
and unsympathizing critics, and securely kept it, too, 
amongst the highest and best productions of the age, 
is a startling marvel in literature. Out of her own 
life she wrought her wonderful works. " The fiery 
imagination that at times eats me up," she wrote to 
her friend. In her stories she but told her own ago- 
nies, as Cowper noted the progress of his insanity, or 
the French physiologist his ebbing pulse under the 
deadly influence of burning charcoal. 

But, recurring to Lamb and his set, what impos- 
sible, incomprehensible characters it included : Elton 
Hammond, for instance, a contemporary if not an 
associate. He inherited his father's tea business in 
Milk Street. In order, be said, to set an example to 
the world how a business should be carried on, and 
that he might not be interfered with in his plans, he 
turned off the clerks and every servant in the estab- 
lishment, which soon wound up the business alto- 
gether. For a while he had no other society than a 
little child, which he taught its letters, and a mouse, 
that fed out of his hands. He journalized his food, 
his sleep, his dreams. He had a conviction that he 
was to have been, and ought to have been, the great- 
est of men, but was conscious in fact that he was not. 
The reason assigned by him for putting an end to his 
life was that he could not condescend to live without 
fulfilling his proper vocation. He said to one of his 
friends that he was on the point of making a discov- 
ery which would put an end to physical and moral 
evil in the world. He quarreled with another of his 
friends for not being willing to join him in carrying a 



CONTRASTS. 279 

heavy box through the streets of London for a poor 
woman. He refused a private secretaryship to Rough, 
a colonial chief justice, on the ground of the obligation 
involved to tell a lie and write a lie every day, sub- 
scribing himself the humble servant of people he did 
not serve, and toward whom he felt no humility. 
Here are a few things he wrote : " When I was about 
eight or ten I promised marriage to a wrinkled cook 
we had, aged about sixty -five. I was convinced of the 
insignificance of beauty, but really felt some consider- 
able ease at hearing of her death, about four years 
after, when I began to repent of my vow." .... "I 
always said that I would do anything to make another 
happy, and told a boy I would give him a shilling if 
it would make him happy ; he said it would, so I gave 
it to him. It is not to be wondered at that I had 
plenty of such applications, and soon emptied my 
purse. It is true I rather grudged the money, because 
the boys laughed rather more than I mshed them. 
But it would have been inconsistent to have appeared 
dissatisfied. Some of them were generous enough to 
return the money, and I was prudent enough to take 
it, though I declared that if it would make them 
happy I should be sorry to have it back." . ..." It 
is not pain, it is not death, that I dread, it is the 
hatred of a man ; there is something in it so shocking 
that I would rather submit to any injury than incur 
or increase the hatred of a man by revenging it." 
. . . . " The chief philosophical value of my papers I 
conceive to be that they record something of a mind 
that was very near taking a station far above all that 
have hitherto appeared in the world." . ..." It is 



280 LIBRARY NOTES. 

provoking that the secret of rendering man perfect in 
wisdom, power, virtue, and happiness should die with 
me. I never till this moment doubted that some other 
person would discover it ; but I now recollect that 
when I have relied on others I have always been dis- 
appointed. Perhaps none may ever discover it, and 
the human race has lost its only chance of eternal 
happiness." . ..." I believe that man requires re- 
ligion. I believe that there is no true religion now 
existing. I believe that there will be one. It will 
not, after eighteen hundred years of existence, be of 
questionable truth and utility, but perhaps in eighteen 
years be entirely spread over the earth, an effectual 
remedy for all human suffering, and a source of per- 
petual joy. It will not need immense learning to be 
understood, it will be subject to no controversy." .... 
" Another sufficient reason for suicide is that I was 
this morning out of temper with Mrs. Douglas (for no 
fault of hers). I did not betray myself in the least, 
but I reflected to be exposed to the possibility of such 
an event once a year was evil enough to render life 
intolerable. The disgrace of using an impatient word 
is to me overpowering." . ..." I am stupefied with 
writing, and yet I cannot go my long journey without 
taking leave of one from whom I have received so 
much kindness, and from whose society so much de- 
light. My place is booked in Charon's boat to-night 
at twelve. Diana kindly consents to be of the party. 
This is handsome of her. She was not looked for on 
my part. Perhaps she is willing to acknowledge my 
obedience to her laws by a genteel compliment. 
Good. The gods, then, are grateful." To the cor- 



CONTRASTS. 281 

oner and his jury lie wrote, " Let me suggest the 
following verdict, as combining literal truth with jus- 
tice : ' Died by his own hand, but not feloniously.' 
If I have offended God, it is for God, not you, to in- 
quire. Especial public duties I have none. If I have 
deserted any engagement in society, let the parties 
aggrieved consign my name to obloquy. I have for 
nearly seven years been disentangling myself from all 
my engagements, that I might at last be free to retire 
from life. I am free to-day, and avail myself of my 
liberty. I cannot be a good man, and prefer death to 
being a bad one, — as bad as I have been and as oth- 
ers are." 

And George Dyer — a pet associate of Lamb's — 
what a character was he ! A bundle of contradictions 
if ever there was one. Poor and always struggling, 
but never envious, and utterly without hatred of the 
rich. A poet whose poetry was to himself " as good 
as anybody's, and anybody's as good as his own." 
A bachelor, his life was solitary, but he never thought 
of his solitude, till it was suggested to him by an ob- 
serving, sympathizing widow, who kindly and gen- 
erously consented to share it with him — her fourth 
husband ! He is characterized by one of Ins literary 
friends as " one of the best creatures morally that 
ever bi-eathed." He was a ripe scholar, but to the 
end of his days (and he lived to be eighty-five) he 
was a bookseller's drudge. He made indexes, cor- 
rected the press, and occasionally gave lessons in 
Greek and Latin. Simple and kind, he repeatedly 
gave away his last guinea. He was the author of the 
Life and Writings of Robert Robinson, which was 



282 LIBEARY NOTES. 

pronounced by Wordsworth and Samuel Parr one of 
the best biographies in the language. The charm of 
the book is that Robinson's peculiar humor was wholly 
unappreciated by the simple-minded biographer. Rob- 
inson was a fine humorist ; Dyer had absolutely no 
sense of humor. It was when he was on his way from 
Lamb's to Mrs. Barbauld's, that, in his absent-mind- 
edness, he walked straight into New River, and was 
with difficulty saved from drowning. (Young, who 
sat for the portrait of Parson Adams, was another 
such character. He also " supported an uncom- 
fortable existence by translating for the booksellers 
from the Greek," overflowed with benevolence and 
learning, and was noted for his absence of mind. He 
had been chaplain of a regiment during Marlborough's 
wars ; and " meditating one evening upon the glories 
of nature, and the goodness of Providence, he walked 
straight into the camp of the enemy ; nor was he 
aroused from his reverie till the hostile sentinel 
shouted, ' Who goes there ? ' The commanding offi- 
cer, finding that he had come among them in simplic- 
ity and not in guile, allowed him to return, and lose 
himself, if he pleased, in meditations on his danger 
and deliverance.") It is said that certain roguish 
young ladies. Dyer's cousins, lacking due reverence 
for learning and poetry, were wont to heap all sorts 
of meats upon the worthy gentleman's plate at din- 
ner, he being lost in conversation until near the close 
of the repast, when he would suddenly recollect him- 
self and fall to till he had finished the whole. Tal- 
fourd, speaking of Lamb and Dyer, says, " No con- 
trast could be more vivid than that presented by the 



CONTRASTS. 283 

relations of each to the literature they both loved, — 
one divining its inmost essences, plucking out the 
heart of its mj^steries, shedding light on its dimmest 
recesses ; the other devoted with equal assiduity to 
its externals. Books, to Dyer, ' were a real world? 
both pure and good ; ' among them he passed, uncon- 
scious of time, from youth to extreme old age, vege- 
tating on their dates and forms, and * trivial fond 
records,' in the learned air of great libraries, or the 
dusty confusion of his own, with the least possible 
apprehension of any human interest vital in their 
pages, or of any spirit of wit or fancy glancing across 
them. His life was an academic pastoral. Methinks 
I see his gaunt, awkward form, set off by trousers 
too short, like those outgrown by a gawky lad, and a 
rusty coat as much too large for the wearer, hanging 
about him like those garments which the aristocratic 
Milesian peasantry prefer to the most comfortable 
rustic dress ; his long head silvered over with short 
yet straggling hair, and his dark gray eyes glisten- 
ing with faith and wonder, as Lamb satisfies the cu- 
riosity which has gently disturbed his studies as to the 
authorship of the Waverley Novels, by telling him, in 
the strictest confidence, that they are the works of 
Lord Castlereagh, just returned from the Congress of 
Sovereigns at Vienna. Off he runs, with animated 
stride and shambling enthusiasm, nor stops till he 
reaches Maida Hill, and breathes his news into the 
startled ear of Leigh Hunt, who, ' as a public writer,' 
ought to be possessed of the great fact with which 
George is laden ! Or shall I endeavor to revive the 
bewildered look with which just after he had been 



284 LIBRARY NOTES. 

announced as one of Lord Stanhope's executors and 
residuary legatees, he received Lamb's grave inquiry 
whether it was true, as commonly reported, that he 
was to be made a lord ? ' Oh dear, no, Mr. Lamb,' 
responded he with earnest seriousness, but not without 
a moment's quivering vanity. ' I could not think of 
such a thing ; it is not true, I assure you.' ' I thought 
not,' said Lamb, ' and I contradict it wherever I go. 
But the government will not ask your consent ; they 
may raise you to the peerage without your ever 
knowing it.' * I hope not, Mr. Lamb ; indeed — 
indeed, I hope not. It would not suit me at all,' 
responded Dyer, and went his way musing on the 
possibility of a strange honor descending on his reluc- 
tant brow. Or shall I recall the visible presentment 
of his bland unconsciousness of evil when his sportive 
friend taxed it to the utmost by suddenly asking what 
he thought of the murderer Williams, who, after 
destroying two families in Ratcliffe Highway, had 
broken prison by suicide, and whose body had just 
before been conveyed in shocking procession to its 
cross-road grave ? The desperate attempt to compel 
the gentle optimist to speak ill of a mortal creature 
produced no happier success than the answer, ' Why, 
I should think, Mr. Lamb, he must have been rather 
an eccentric character.' " Honest, simple soul ! My 
Uncle Toby over again, for all the world. 

What a contrast with all these ailing souls was the 
magnificent Christopher North ! You remember the 
scene of his triumph on the occasion of his first lect- 
ure to the moral philosophy class in the University 
of Edinburgh. It deserves to be thought of along 



CONTRASTS. 285 

with the "trial scenes" we have been reviewing. 
The contest for the professorship had been bitterly 
fought over a period of four months, with Sir Will- 
iam Hamilton for competitor, — Sir James Mackin- 
tosh and Mr. Malthus being only possible candidates. 
Abuse and prejudice — essential and saintly elements 
in all good Scotsmen — skillfully combined against 
him, and inveterately pursued him. " When it was 
found useless to gainsay his mental qualifications for 
the office, or to excite odium on the ground of his liter- 
ary offenses, the attack was directed against his moral 
character, and it was broadly insinuated that this 
candidate for the chair of ethics was himself a man 
of more than doubtful morality ; that he was, in fact, 
not merely a ' reveler,' and a 'blasphemer,' but a bad 
husband, a bad father, a person not fit to be trusted 
as a teacher of youth." A " bad husband " to the 
good woman he thus memorably characterized in a 
letter to one of his friends : "I was this morning 
married to Jane Penney, and doubt not of receiving 
your blessing, which, from your brotherly heart, will 
delight me, and doubtless not be unheard by the Al- 
mighty. She is gentleness, innocence, sense, and feel- 
ing, surpassed by no woman, and has remained pure, 
as from her Maker's hands ; " the mother of all those 
children he loved so, — the death of whom, in his ripe 
manhood and in the bloom of his fame, nearly broke 
his heart ! Sir Walter and other powerful friends re- 
pelled the slanders. Wilson triumphed. Still he 
was pursued ; his enemies determined he should be 
put down, humiliated, even in his own class-room. 
An eye-witness thus describes the scene on the occa- 



286 LIBEARY NOTES. 

sion of the delivery of the professor's first lecture: 
" There was a furious bitterness of feeling against 
him among the classes of which probably most of his 
pupils would consist, and although I had no prospect 
of being among them, I went to his first lecture, pre- 
pared to join in a cabal, which I understood was 
formed to put him down. The lecture-room was 
crowded to the ceiling. Such a collection of hard- 
browed, scowling Scotsmen, muttering over their 
knobsticks, I never saw. The professor entered with 
a bold step, amid profound silence. Every one ex- 
pected some deprecatory or propitiatory introduction 
of himself and his subject, upon which the mass was 
to decide against him, reason or no reason ; but he 
began in a voice of thunder right into the matter of 
his lecture, kept up unflinchingly and unhesitatingly, 
without a pause, a flow of rhetoric such as Dugald 
Stewart or Thomas Brown, his predecessors, never 
delivered in the same place. Not a word, not a mur- 
mur escaped his captivated, I ought to say his con- 
quered audience, and at the end they gave him a down- 
right unanimous burst of applause. Those who came 
to scoff remained to praise." The ruling classes in 
educational matters could not conceive of the fitness 
of a man like Wilson for the moral philosophy chair 
in a university. The giant he was physically, with 
appetites and passions to match, he was a reproach to 
the feeble, a terror to the timid, and a horror to the 
" unco guid, or the rigidly righteous." The truth of 
him was such an exaggeration of the average man 
that the scholars and pedagogues and parsons could 
only look upon him as a monster, with a character as 



CONTRASTS. 287 

monstrous as his nature. He is described as " long- 
maned and mighty, whose eyes were ' as the light- 
nings of fiery flame,' and his voice like an organ bass ; 
who laid about him, when the fit was on, like a Titan, 
breaking small men's bones ; who was loose and care- 
less in his apparel, even as in all things he seemed 
too strong and primitive to heed much the niceties of 
custom." In his youth, he " ran three miles for a 
wager against a chaise," and came out ahead. Some- 
what later he "gained a bet by walking, toe and heel, 
six miles in two minutes within the hour." When he 
was twenty-one, height five feet eleven inches, weight 
eleven stone, he leaped, with a run, twenty-three feet 
"on a slightly inclined plane, perhaps an inch to a 
yard,'' and " was admitted to be (Ireland excepted) 
the best far leaper of his day in England." He could 
jump twelve yards in three jumps, with a great stone 
in each hand. " With him the angler's silent trade 
was a ruling passion. He did not exaggerate to the 
Shepherd in the Noctes, when he said that he had 
taken ' a hundred and thirty in one day out of Loch 
Aire,' as we see by his letters that even larger num- 
bers were taken by him." Of his pugilistic skill, it 
is said by De Quincey that " there was no man who 
had any talents, real or fancied, for thumping or be- 
ing thumped, but he had experienced some preeing of 
his merits from Mr. Wilson." " Meeting one day 
with a rough and unruly wayfarer, who showed incli- 
nation to pick a quarrel concerning right of passage 
across a certain bridge, the fellow obstructed the way, 
and making himself decidedly obnoxious, Wilson lost 
all patience, and offered to fight him. The man 



288 LIBRARY NOTES. 

made no objection to the proposal, but replied tbat 
be had better not fight with him., as he was so and so, 
mentioning the name of a (then not unknown) pu- 
gilist. This statement had, as may be supposed, no 
effect in dampening the belligerent intentions of the 
Oxonian ; he knew his own strength, and his skill too. 
In one moment off went his coat, and he set to upon* 
his antagonist in splendid style. The astonished and 
punished rival, on recovering from his blows and sur- 
prise, accosted him thus : ' You can only be one of the 
two : you are either Jack Wilson or the devil.' " 
His pedestrian feats were marvelous. " On one oc- 
casion," writes an old classmate of Wilson's at Ox- 
ford, " having been absent a day or two, we asked 
him, on his return to the common room, where he 
had been. He said. In London. When did you re- 
turn ? This morning. How did you come ? On 
foot. As we all expressed surprise, he said, ' Why, 
the fact is, I dined yesterday with a friend in Gros- 
venor (I think it was) Square, and as I quitted the 
house, a fellow who was passing was impertinent and 
insulted me, upon which I knocked him down ; and 
as I did not choose to have myself called in question 
for a street row, I at once started, as I was, in my 
dinner dress, and never stopped until I got to the 
college gate this morning, as it was being opened.' 
Now this was a walk of fifty -eight miles at least, 
which he must have got over in eight or nine hours 
at most, supposing him to have left the dinner-party 
at nine in the evening." Some years later, he walked 
— his wife accompanying him — " three hundred and 
fifty miles in the Highlands, between the 5th of July 



CONTRASTS. 289 

and the 26tli of August, sojourning in divers glens 
from Sabbath unto Sabbath, fishing, eating, and star- 
ing." Mrs. Wilson returned from this wonderful 
tour " bonnier than ever," and Wilson himself, to 
use his own phrase, " strong as an eagle." One of 
their resting-places was at the school-master's house 
in Glenorchy. While there " his time was much oc- 
cupied by fishing, and distance was not considered 
an obstacle. He started one morning at an early 
hour to fish in a loch which at that time abounded 
in trout, in the Braes of Glenorchy, called Loch Toila. 
Its nearest point was thirteen miles distant from 
his lodgings at the school-house. On reaching it, 
and unscrewing the butt-end of his fishing-rod to 
get the top, he found he had it not. Nothing 
daunted, he walked back, breakfasted, got his fish- 
ing-rod, made all complete, and off again to Loch 
Toila. He could not resist fishing on the river when 
a pool looked inviting, but he went always onwards, 
reaching the loch a second time, fished round it, and 
found that the long summer day had come to an end. 
He set off for his home again with his fishing-basket 
full, and confessing somewhat to weariness. Passing 
near a farm-house whose inmates he knew (for he had 
formed acquaintance with all), he went to get some 
food. They were in bed, for it was eleven o'clock at 
night, and after rousing them, the hostess hastened 
to supply him ; but he requested her to get him some 
whisky and milk. She came with a bottle full, and 
a can of milk, with a tumbler. Instead of a tumbler, 
he requested a bowl, and poured the half of the whisky 
in, along with half the milk. He drank the mixture 

19 



290- LIBRARY NOTES. 

at a draught, and while his kind hostess was looking 
on with amazement, he poured the remainder of the 
whisky and milk into the bowl, and drank that also. 
He then proceeded homeward, performing a journey 
of not less than seventy miles." Prodigious ! It beat 
the achievement of Phidippides, who, according to 
tradition, ran from Athens to Sparta, one hundred 
and twenty miles, in two days. But here is a street 
scene, related to his daughter by a lady who saw it, 
which illustrates the tremendous professor of moral 
philosophy still further. " One summer afternoon, 
as she was about to sit down to dinner, her servant 
requested her to look out of the window, to see a 
man cruelly beating his horse. The sight not being a 
very gratifying one, she declined, and proceeded to take 
her seat at table. It was quite evident that the serv- 
ant had discovered something more than the ill-usage 
of the horse to divert his attention, for he kept his 
eyes fixed on the window, again suggesting to his 
mistress that she ought to look out. Her interest was 
at length excited, and she rose to see what was going 
on. In front of her house (Moray Place) stood a 
cart of coals, which the poor victim of the carter was 
unable to drag along. He had been beating the beast 
most unmercifully, when at that moment Professor 
Wilson, walking past, had seen the outrage and im- 
mediately interfered. The lady said that from the 
expression of his face, and vehemence of his manner, 
the man was evidently ' getting it,' though she was 
unable to hear what was said. The carter, exas- 
perated at this interference, took up his whip in a 
threatening way, as if with the intent to strike the 



CONTRASTS. 291 

professor. In an instant that well-nerved hand twisted 
it from the coarse fist of the man as if it had been a 
straw, and walking quietly up to the cart he unfast- 
ened its trams, and hurled the whole weight of coals 
into the street. The rapidity with which this was 
done left the driver of the cart speechless. Meanwhile, 
poor Rosinante, freed from his burden, crept slowly 
away, and the professor, still clutching the whip in 
one hand, and leading the horse in the other, pro- 
ceeded through Moray Place to deposit the wretched 
animal in better keeping than that of his driver." 
Another of his " interferences " occurred during va- 
cation time, in the south of Scotland, when the pro- 
fessor had exchanged the gown for the old " sporting 
jacket." " On his return to Edinburgh, he was 
obliged to pass through Hawick, where, on his ar- 
rival, finding it to be fair-day, he readily availed him- 
self of the opportunity to witness the amusements 
going on. These happened to include a ' little mill ' 
between two members of the local ' fancy.' His in- 
terest in pugilism attracted him to the spot, where he 
soon discovered something very wrong, and a degree 
of injustice being perpetrated which he could not 
stand. It was the work of a moment to espouse the 
weaker side, a proceeding which naturally drew down 
upon him the hostility of the opposite party. This 
result was to him, however, of little consequence. 
There was nothing for it but to beat or be beaten. 
He was soon ' in position ; ' and, before his unknown 
adversary well knew what was coming, the skilled fist 
of the professor had planted such a ' facer ' as did 
not require repetition. Another ' round ' was not 



292 LIBRARY NOTES. 

called for ; and leaving the discomfited champion to 
recover at his leisure, the professor walked coolly 
away to take his seat in the stage-coach, about to 
start for Edinburgh." Is it any wonder that such a 
gigantic specimen of human nature was thought by 
the steady- going and saintly Edinburghers, who tried 
men only by mathematics and the catechism, to be 
preposterously unfit for the chair of ethics in their 
hallowed university ? They did not know then that 
the monster they hunted was capable of producing a 
description of a fair y^s funeral — one of the most ex- 
quisite bits of prose composition in literature, which 
is said to have so impressed Lord Jeffrey's mind that 
he never was tired of repeating it. Read it, and say 
you if anybody but Christopher North could have 
written it : " There it was, on a little river island, 
that once, whether sleeping or waking we know not, 
we saw celebrated a fairy's funeral. First we heard 
small pipes playing, as if no bigger than hollow 
rushes that whisper to the night winds ; and more 
piteous than aught that trills from earthly instrument 
was the scarce audible dirge I It seemed to float over 
the stream, every foam-bell emitting a plaintive note, 
till the fairy anthem came floating over our couch, 
and then alighting without footsteps among the 
heather. The pattering of little feet was then heard, 
as if living creatures were arranging themselves in 
order, and then there was nothing but a more ordered 
hymn. The harmony was like the melting of mu- 
sical dew-drops, and sang, without words, of sorrow 
and death. We opened our eyes, or rather sight 
came to them when closed, and dream was vision. 



CONTRASTS. 293 

Hundreds of creatures, no taller than the crest of the 
lapwing, and all hanging down their veiled heads, 
stood in a circle on a green plat among the rocks ; 
and in the midst was a bier, framed as it seemed of 
flowers unknown to the Highland hills ; and on the 
bier a fairy lying with uncovered face, pale as a lily, 
and motionless as the snow. The dirge grew fainter 
and fainter, and then died quite away ; when two of 
the creatures came from the circle, and took their sta- 
tion, one at the head, the other at the foot of the 
bier. They sang alternate measures, not louder than 
the twitter of the awakened woodlark before it goes 
up the dewy air, but dolorous and full of the desola- 
tion of death. The flower-bier stirred ; for the spot 
on which it lay sank slowly down, and in a few mo- 
ments the greensward was smooth as ever, the very 
dews glittering above the buried fairy. A cloud passed 
over the moon ; and, with a choral lament, the 
funeral troop sailed duskil}^ away, heard afar off, so 
still was the midnight solitude of the glen. Then 
the disenthralled Orchy began to rejoice as before, 
through all her streams and falls ; and at the sudden 
leaping of the waters and outbursting of the moon, 
we awoke." 



XL 

TYPES. 

"It never rains but it pours," is the pat proverb of 
all the world to express its belief in the inevitableness 
and omnipotence of extremes. Carlyle has enlarged 
upon it significantly, in that famous passage in which 
he likens men collectively to sheep. Like sheep, he 
says, are we seen ever running in torrents and mobs, 
if we ever run at all. " Neither know we, except by 
blind habit, where the good pastures lie : solely when 
the sweet grass is between our teeth, we know it, and 
chew it ; also when the grass is bitter and scant, we 
know it, — and bleat and butt : these last two facts 
we know of a truth, and in very deed. Thus do men 
and sheep play their parts on this nether earth ; 
wandering restlessly in large masses, they know not 
whither ; for most part, each folloAving his neighbor, 
and his own nose. Nevertheless, not always ; look 
better, you shall find certain that do, in some small 
degree, know whither. Sheep have their bell-wether, 
some ram of the folds, endued with more valor, with 
clearer vision than other sheep ; he leads them through 
the wolds, by height and hollow, to the woods and 
water-courses, for covert or for pleasant provender ; 
courageously marching, and if need be leaping, and 
with hoof and horn doing battle, in the van : him 



TYPES. 295 

tliey courageously, and with assured heart, follow. 
Touching it is, as every herdsman will inform you, 
with what chivalrous devotedness these woolly hosts 
adhere to their wether ; and rush after him, through 
good report and through bad report, were it into safe 
shelters and green thy my nooks, or into asphaltic 
lakes and the jaws of devouring lions. Even also 
must we recall that fact which we owe Jean Paul's 
quick eye : ' If you hold a stick before the wether, so 
that he, by necessity, leaps in passing you, and then 
withdraw your stick, the flock will nevertheless all 
leap as he did ; and the thousandth sheep shall be 
found impetuously vaulting over air, as the first did 
over an otherwise impassable barrier.' " 

Society is always swaying, backward and forward 
— vibrating, like the pendulum, from one extreme to 
another ; for a moment only, now and then, is it up- 
right, and governed by reason. " In the grove of 
Gotama lived a Brahman, who, having bought a 
sheep in another village, and carrying it home on his 
shoulder to sacrifice, was seen by three rogues, who 
resolved to take the animal from him by the follow- 
ing stratagem : Having separated, they agreed to en- 
counter the Brahman on his road as if coming from 
different parts. One of them called out, ' O Brah- 
man ! why dost thou carry that dog on thy shoulder ? ' 
' It is not a dog,' replied the Brahman ; ' it is a sheep 
for sacrifice.' As he went on, the second knave met 
him, and put the same question ; whereupon the 
Brahman, throwing the sheep on the ground, looked 
at it again and again. Having replaced it on his 
shoulder, the good man went with mind waving like 



296 LIBKARY NOTES. 

a string. But when the third rogue met him and 
said, ' Father, where art thou taking that dog ? * the 
Brahman, believing his eyes bewitched, threw down 
the sheep and hurried home, leaving the thieves to 
feast on that which he had provided for the gods." 
Traveling through Switzerland, Napoleon was greeted 
with such enthusiasm that Bourrienne said to him, 
" It must be delightful to be greeted with such dem- 
onstrations of enthusiastic admiration." " Bah ! " 
replied Napoleon, " this same unthinking crowd, un- 
der a slight change of circumstances, would follow me 
just as eagerly to the scaffold." Madame Roland 
wrote from her prison-cell to Robespierre, " It is not, 
Robespierre, to excite your compassion, that I present 
you with a picture less melancholy than the truth. I 
am above asking your pity ; and, were it offered, I 
should, perhaps, deem it an insult. I write for your 
instruction. Fortune is fickle ; and popular power is 
liable to change." " Society," said Macaulay, writ- 
ing of Byron, " capricious in its indignation, as it 
had been capricious in its fondness, flew into a rage 
with its froward and petted darling. He had been 
worshiped with an irrational idolatry. He was per- 
secuted with an irrational fury." Junius, in the cel- 
ebrated letter, warns the king that "while he plumes 
himself upon the security of his title to the crown, 
he should remember that, as it was acquired by one 
revolution, it may be lost by another." *' The Jews," 
said Luther, " have various stories about a king of 
Bashan, whom they call Og ; they say he had lifted a 
great rock to throw at his enemies, but God made a 
hole in the middle, so that it slipped down upon the 
giant's neck, and he could never rid himself of it." 



TYPES. 297 

Causes of good or evil seem to accumulate, when a 
very slight thing is the beginning of a succession of 
blessings or curses. All things conspire, till the re- 
cipients of blessings are smothered, or the victims of 
curses are crushed. Till the cup is full, overflowing ; 
till the burden is unbearable, merciless ; till good be- 
comes satiety, or evil cruelty, — all the world seems 
to delight in contributing or robbing, deifying or 
anathematizing. 

' ' Never stoops the soaring vulture 
On his quarry in the desert, 
On the sick or wounded bison, 
But another vulture, watching 
From his high aerial lookout, 
Sees the downward plunge and follows ; 
And a third pursues the second, 
Coming from the invisible ether. 
First a speck, and then a vulture. 
Till the air is dark with pinions. 
So disasters come not singly ; 
But as if they watched and waited, 
Scanning one another's motions, 
When the first descends, the others 
Follow, follow, gathering flock-wise 
Round their victim, sick and wounded. 
First a shadow, then a sorrow. 
Till the air is dark with anguish." 

" What a noise out-of-doors ! " exclaimed Souves- 
tre's Philosopher from his attic in Paris. " What is 
the meaning of all these shouts and cries ? Ah ! I 
recollect : this is the last day of the carnival, and the 
maskers are passing. Christianity has not been able 
to abolish the noisy bacchanalian festivals of the pa- 
gan times, but it has changed the names. That 



298 LIBRARY NOTES. 

which it has given to these ' days of liberty ' an- 
nounces the ending of the feasts, and the month of 
fasting which should follow ; ' carn-a-val ' means lit- 
erally ' down with flesh meat ! ' It is a forty days' 
farewell to the ' blessed pullets and fat hams,' so cele- 
brated by Pantagruel's minstrel. Man prepares for 
privation by satiety, and finishes his sins thoroughly 
before he begins to repent. Why, in all ages and 
among every people, do we meet with some one of 
these mad festivals ? Must we believe that it requires 
such an effort for men to be reasonable, that the 
weaker ones have need of rest at intervals. The 
monks of La Trappe, who are condemned to silence 
by their rule, are allowed to speak once in a month, 
and on this day, they all talk at once from the rising 
to the setting of the sun." 

It is reported of Scaramouche, the first famous 
Italian comedian, that being in Paris, and in great 
want, he bethought himself of constantly plying near 
the door of a noted perfumer in that city, and when 
any one came out who had been buying snuff, never 
failed to desire a taste of them : when he had by this 
means got together a quantity made up of several 
different sorts, he sold it again at a lower rate to the 
same perfumer, who, finding out the trick, called it 
" snuff of a thousand flowers." The story further 
tells us that by this means he got a very comfortable 
subsistence, until, making too great haste to grow 
rich, he one day took such an unreasonable pinch out 
of the box of a Swiss officer as engaged him in a 
quarrel, and obliged him to quit this ingenious way 
of life. 



TYPES. 299 

" I remember," says Cumberland, in his Memoirs, 
" the predicament of an ingenious mechanic and artist, 
who, when Rich the harlequin was the great dramatic 
author of his time, and wrote successfully for the 
stage, contrived and executed a most delicious ser- 
pent for one of those inimitable productions, in which 
Mr. Rich, justly disdaining the weak aid of language, 
had selected the classical fable, if I rightly recollect, 
of Orpheus and Eurydice, and, having conceived a 
very capital part for the serpent, was justly anxious 
to provide himself with a performer who could sup- 
port a character of that consequence with credit to 
himself and his author. The event answered his 
most ardent hopes ; nothing could be more perfect 
than his entrances and exits ; nothing ever crawled 
across the stage with more accomplished sinuosity 
than this enchanting serpent ; every one was charmed 
with its performance ; it twirled and twisted, and 
wriggled itself about in so divine a manner, that the 
whole world was ravished by the lovely snake ; nobles 
and non-nobles, rich and poor, old and young, reps 
and demi-reps, flocked to see it and admire it. The 
artist, who had been the master of the movement, was 
intoxicated with his success ; he turned his hand and 
head to nothing else but serpents ; he made them of 
all sizes ; they crawled about his shop as if he had been 
chief snake-catcher to the furies ; the public curiosity 
was satisfied with one serpent, and he had nests of 
them yet unsold ; his stock lay dead upon his hands, 
his trade was lost, and the man was ruined, bankrupt, 
and undone." 

Lecky observes that when, after long years of ob- 



300 LIBRARY NOTES. , 

stinate disbelief, the reality of the great discovery of 
Harvey dawned upon the medical world, the first 
result was a school of medicine which regarded man 
simply as an hydraulic machine, and found the prin- 
ciple of every malady in imperfections of circulation. 
In the Arctic region, says Lieutenant Kane, the 
frost is so intense as to burn. In Arabia, travelers 
declare, the silence of the desert is so profound that 
it soon ceases to be soothing or solemn, and becomes 
absolutely painful, if not appalling. In Java, that 
magnificent and fearful clime, the most lovely flowers 
are found to conceal hidden reptiles ; the most tempt- 
ing fruits are tinct with subtle poisons; there grow 
those splendid trees whose shadow is death ; there the 
vampire, an enormous bat, sucks the blood of the vic- 
tims whose sleep he prolongs, by wafting over them 
an air full of freshness and perfume. Darwin, in his 
Voyage, speaks of the strange mixture of sound and 
silence which pervades the shady parts of the wood 
on the shore of Brazil. The noise from the insects is 
so loud that it may be heard even in a vessel an- 
chored several hundred yards from the shore ; yet 
within the recesses of the forest a universal silence 
appears to reign. " A dunghill at a distance," says 
Coleridge, " sometimes smells like musk, and a dead 
dog like elder-flowers." Scargill declared that an 
' Englishman is never happy but when he is miser- 
able ; a Scotchman is never at home but when he is 
abroad ; an Irishman is at peace only when he is fight- 
ing. " The melancholy," says Horace, " hate the 
merry, the jocose the melancholy; the volatile dis- 
like the sedate, the indolent the stirring and vivacious ; 



TYPES. 301 

the modest man generally carries the look of a churl." 
Meyer, in conversation with Goethe, said he saw a 
shoemaker in Italy who hammered his leather upon 
the antique marble head of a Roman emperor. The 
lark, that sings out of the sky, purifies himself, like 
the pious Mussulman, in the dust of the ground. The 
elephant, that no quadruped has the temerity to at- \ 
tack, is said to be the favorite victim of a worm that / 
bores into his foot and slowly tortures him to death. 
" The impious Nimrod," according to a tradition of 
the Arabs, " enraged at the destruction of his gods by 
Abraham, sought to slay him, and waged war against 
him. But the prophet prayed to God, and said, 
' Deliver me, O God, from this man, who worships 
stones, and boasts himself to be the lord of all be- 
ings ; ' and God said to him, ' How shall I punish 
him ? ' And the prophet answered, ' To Thee armies 
are as nothing, and the strength and power of men 
likewise. Before the smallest of thy creatures will 
they perish.' And God was pleased at the faith of 
the prophet, and he sent a gnat, which vexed Nimrod 
night and day, so that he built a room of glass in his 
palace, that he might dwell therein, and shut out the 
insect. But the gnat entered also, and passed by his 
ear into his brain, upon which it fed, and increased in 
size day by day, so that the servants of Nimrod beat 
his head with a hammer continually, that he might 
have some ease from his pain ; but he died, after 
suffering these torments for four hundred year§." 

" The grandiose statues of Michel Angelo," said a 
traveler, descanting upon the art and architecture of 
old Rome, " appear to the greatest advantage under 



302 LIBRARY NOTES. 

the bold arches of Bramante. There — between 
those broad lines, under those prodigious curves — 
placed in one of those courts, or near one of the great 
temples where the perspective is incomplete — the 
statues of Michel Angelo display their tragic atti- 
tudes, their gigantic members, which seem animated 
by a ray from the divinity, and struggling to mount 
from earth to heaven. Bramante and Michel Angelo 
detested but completed each other. Thus it is often 
in human nature. Those two men knew not that they 
were laborers in the same work. And history is silent 
on such points till death has passed over her heroes. 
Armies have fought until they have been almost an- 
nihilated on the field of battle ; men have hated and 
injured one another by their calumnies ; the learned 
and powerful persecute and seek to blot their fello-vwB 
from the earth, as if there was not air and space for 
all; they know not, blinded by their passions, and 
warped by the prejudices of envy, that the future will 
blend them in the same glory, that to posterity they 
will represent but one sentiment. Bramante and 
Michel Angelo, enemies during life, are reconciled in 
immortality." 

See how the extremes in morals and legislation met 
during the few years of English history covering the 
Protectorate and the Restoration. Puritanism and 
liberty of conscience, whose exponents were Cromwell 
and Milton, met licentiousness and corrupted loyalty, 
with Charles II. and Wycherley for representatives. 
Cromwell was "Puritanism armed and in power;" 
Milton was its apostle and poet. Charles II. was 
kingcraft besotted ; Wycherley its jester and pimp. 



TYPES. 303 

Cromwell — farmer, preacher, soldier, party leader, 
prince — radical, stern, hopeful ; Charles — debauchee, 
persecuting skeptic, faithless ruler ; Milton — lofty in 
his Paradise ; Wycherley — nasty in his Love in a 
Wood, and Country Wife. " A larger soul never 
dwelt in a house of clay," said one who had been 
much about Cromwell, after his death, when flattery 
was mute. " Old Goat " was the name given to 
Charles b}^ one who knew him best. Cromwell, 
" after all his battles and storms, and all the plots of 
assassins against his life, died of grief at the loss of 
his favorite daughter, and of watching at her side." 
Charles went out of life in a fit, the result of his hor- 
rible excesses, if not of poison, — as said and believed 
by many, administered by one of his own numerous 
mistresses. 

First, " the Puritans," says Macaulay, " interdicted, 
under heavy penalties, the use of the Book of Common 
Prayer, not only in churches but in private houses. 
It was a crime in a child to read by the bedside of a 
sick parent one of those beautiful collects which had 
soothed the griefs of forty generations of Christians. 
Severe punishments were denounced against such as 
should presume to blame the Calvinistic mode of wor- 
ship. Clergymen of respectable character were not 
only ejected from their benefices by thousands, but were 
frequently exposed to the outrages of a fanatical rab- 
ble. Churches and sepulchres, fine works of art and 
curious remains of antiquity, were brutally defaced. 
The Parliament resolved that all pictures in the royal 
collection which contained representations of Jesus or 
of the Virgin Mother should be burned. Sculpture 



304 LIBRARY NOTES. 

fared as ill as painting. Nymphs and graces, the 
work of Ionian chisels, were delivered over to Puritan 
stone-masons to be made decent. Against the lighter 
vices the ruling faction waged war with a zeal little 
tempered by humanity or by common-sense. Public 
amusements, from the masques which were exhibited 
at the mansions of the great down to the wrestling 
matches and grinning matches on village greens, were 
vigorously attacked. One ordinance directed that all 
the May-poles in England should forthwith be hewn 
down. One of the first resolutions adopted by Bare- 
bone's Parliament was that no person should be 
admitted into the public service till the house should 
be satisfied with his real godliness." 

Suddenly the wheel turned. " The same people 
who, by a solemn objurgation, had excluded even the 
posterity of their lawful sovereign, exhausted them- 
selves in festivals and rejoicings for his return." Re- 
stored royalty " made it a crime to attend a dissent- 
ing place of worship. A single justice of the peace 
might convict without a jury, and might, for a third 
offense, pass sentence of transportation beyond the 
sea, or for seven years. The whole soul of the re- 
stored church was in the work of crushing the Puri- 
tans, and of teaching her disciples to give unto Caesar 
the things which were Caesar's. She had been pil- 
laged and oppressed by the party which preached an 
austere morality. She had been restored to opulence 
and honor by libertines. Little as the men of mirth 
and fashion were disposed to shape their lives accord- 
ing to her precepts, they were yet ready to fight knee- 
deep in blood for her cathedrals and palaces, for ev- 



TYPES. 305 

ery line of her rubric and every thread of her vest- 
ments. If the debauched cavaUer haunted brothels 
and gambling-houses, he at least avoided conventicles. 
If he ever spoke without uttering ribaldry and blas- 
phemy, he made some amends by his eagerness to 
send Baxter and Howe to jail for preaching and pray- 
ing. The ribaldry of Etherege and Wycherley was, 
in the presence and under the special sanction of the 
head of the church, publicly recited by female lips in 
female ears, while the author of the Pilgrim's Prog- 
ress languished in a dungeon for the crime of pro- 
claiming the gospel to the poor. Then came those 
days never to be recalled without a blush — the days 
of servitude without loyalty, and sensuality without 
love, of dwarfish talents and gigantic vices, the para- 
dise of cold hearts and narrow minds, the golden age 
of the coward, the bigot, and the slave. The caresses 
of harlots and the jests of buffoons regulated the 
manners of a government which had just ability 
enough to deceive, and just religion enough to perse- 
cute. The principles of liberty were the scoff of 
every grinning courtier, and the Anathema Mara- 
natha of every fawning dean. Crime succeeded to 
crime, and disgrace to disgrace, till the race, accursed 
of God and man, was a second time driven forth, to 
wander on the face of the earth, and be a by- word 
and a shaking of the head to the nations." 

The morality of the time was illustrated in the 
character of the sovereign, according to whom " every 
person was to be bought ; but some people haggled 
more about their price than others ; and when this 
haggling was very obstinate and very skillful, it was 

20 



306 LIBRARY NOTES. 

called by some fine name. The chief trick by which 
clever men kept up the price of their abilities was 
called integrity. The chief trick by which handsome 
women kept up the price of their beauty was called 
modesty. The love of God, the love of country, the 
love of family, the love of friends, were phrases of 
the same sort, delicate and convenient synonyms for 
the love of self." 

" Puritanism," in the opinion of Taine, " had 
brought on an orgie, and fanatics had talked down 
the virtues." 

" To what a place you come in search of knowl- 
edge ! " exclaimed a bitter republican to Castelar, in 
the streets of Rome, during the reign of the pope, 
not long before Victor Emanuel. " Here everybody 
is interested about lottery tickets ; no one for an idea 
of the human brain. The commemoration of the an- 
niversary^ of Shakespeare has been prohibited in this 
city of the arts. Her censorship is so wise that when 
a certain writer wished to publish a book on the dis- 
coveries of Volta, she let loose on him the thunders 
of the Index, thinking it treated of Voltairianism — 
a philosophy which leaves neither repose nor digestion 
to our cardinals. On the other hand, a cabalistic and 
astrological book, professing to divine the caprices of 
the lottery, has been printed and published under the 
pontifical seal, as containing nothing contrary to re- 
ligion, morals, or sovereign authority. Rabelais knew 
this city — Rabelais. On arriving, in place of writ- 
ing a dissertation on dogmas, he penned one on let- 
tuces, the only good and fresh articles in this cursed 
dungeon. And priest though he was, a priest of the 



TYPES. 307 

sixteenth century, more religious than our generation, 
he had a long correspondence with the pious Bishop 
of Maillerais on the children of the pope ; for the 
reverend prelate had especially charged him to ascer- 
tain whether the Cavaliere Pietro Luis Farnese was 
the lawful or illegitimate son of his holiness. Believe 
me, Rabelais knew Rome." 

An old letter-writer, inditing from Paris, says, 
" Nakedness is so innocent here ! In a refined city, 
one gets back to the first chapter of Genesis ; the ex- 
tremes meet, and Paradise and Paris get together." 

See what opposite characters were the leaders in the 
Reformation. The monks said the egg was laid by 
Erasmus, hatched by Luther. '' On the other hand," 
in the words of Motley, " he was reviled for not tak- 
ing side manfully with the reformer. The moderate 
man received much denunciation from zealots on either 
side. He soon clears himself, however, from all sus- 
picions of Lutheranism. He is appalled by the fierce 
conflict which rages far and wide. He becomes quer- 
ulous as the mighty besom sweeps away sacred dust 
and consecrated cobwebs. ' Men should not attempt 
everything at once,' he writes, ' but rather step by 
step. That which men cannot approve they must 
look at through the fingers. If the godlessness of 
mankind requires such fierce physicians as Luther, if 
man cannot be healed with soothing ointments and 
cooling drinks, let us hope that God will comfort, as 
repentant, those whom he has punished as rebellious. 
If the dove of Christ — not the owl of Minerva — 
would only fly to us, some measure might be put to 
the madness of mankind.' Meantime, the man whose 



308 LIBRARY NOTES. 

talk is not of doves and owls, the fierce physician, 
who deals not with ointments and cooling draughts, 
strides past the crowd of gentle quacks to smite the 
foul disease. Devils, thicker than tiles on house-tops, 
scare him not from his work. Bans and bulls, ex- 
communications and decrees, are rained upon his head. 
The paternal emperor sends down dire edicts, thicker 
than hail upon the earth. The Holy Father blasts 
and raves from Rome. Louvain doctors denounce, 
Louvain hangmen burn, the bitter, blasphemous 
books. The immoderate man stands firm in the 
storm, demanding argument instead of illogical thun- 
der ; shows the hangmen and the people, too, outside 
the Elster gate at Wittenberg, that papal bulls will 
blaze as merrily as heretic scrolls." 

Erasmus was a philosophical thinker ; Luther a 
bold actor. The former would reform by the slow 
processes of education ; the latter by revolution. 
" Without Erasmus," says Froude, " Luther would 
have been impossible ; and Erasmus really succeeded 
— so much of him as deserved to succeed — in Lu- 
ther's victory." Erasmus said, " There is no hope for 
any good. It is all over with quiet learning, thought, 
piety, and progress ; violence is on one side and folly 
on the other ; and they accuse me of having caused it 
all. If I joined Luther I could only perish with him, 
and I do not mean to run my neck into the halter. 
Popes and emperors must decide matters. I will ac- 
cept what is good, and do as I can with the rest. Peace 
on any terms is better than the justest war." Luther 
said, " I take Erasmus to be the worst enemy that 
Christ has had for a thousand years. Intellect does 



TYPES. 309 

not understand religion, and when it comes to tlie 
things of God it laughs at them." " Whenever I 
pray," he said, " I pray for a curse upon Erasmus." 

Melancthon was as different from Luther as Eras- 
mus. He was the theologian of the three, — so much 
so that the scholars were all jealous of him. Sir 
Thomas" More wrote to Erasmus that Tyndale had 
seen Melancthon in Paris ; that Tyndale was afraid ^'if 
France should receive the word of God by him, it 
would be confirmed in the faith of the Eucharist con- 
trary to the sect of the Wickliffites." Melancthon 
was not only the envied theologian, but he was the 
saintliest of all in character. He was amiable to a 
fault, and as timid and pure as a woman. When Me- 
lancthon arose to preach on one occasion, he took this 
for a text: "lam the good shepherd." In looking 
round upon his numerous and respectable audience, 
his natural timidity entirely overcame him, and he 
could only repeat the text over and over again. Lu- 
ther, who was in the pulpit with him, at length im- 
patiently exclaimed, " You are a very good sheep ! " 
and telling him to sit down, took the same text, and 
preached an excellent discourse from it. 

Coming down to later times, and to characters more 
purely literary, what could more beautifully illustrate 
the harmony of opposites, so often observable in liter- 
ature and life, than the intimacy which existed be- 
tween Professor AVilson and Dr. Blair ? The course 
and habit of Dr. Blair's life " were like the smooth, 
deep water ; serene, undisturbed to outer eye ; and 
the very repose that was about him had a charm for 
the restless, active energy of his friend, who turned to 



310 LIBRARY NOTES. 

tliis gentle and meek nature for mental rest. I have 
often seen them sitting together," says Mrs. Gordon, 
" in the quiet retirement of the study, perfectly ab- 
sorbed in each other's presence, like school-boys in 
the abandonment of their love for each other, occupy- 
ing one seat between them, my father, with his arm 
lovingly embracing ' the dear doctor's ' shoulders, 
playfully pulling the somewhat silvered locks to draw 
his attention to something in the tome spread out on 
their knees, from which they were both reading. Such 
discussions as they had together hour upon hour! 
Shakespeare, Milton — always the loftiest themes — 
never weary in doing honor to the great souls from 
whom they had learnt so much. Their voices were dif- 
ferent, too : Dr. Blair's soft and sweet as that of a 
woman ; the professor's sonorous, sad, with a nervous 
tremor : each revealing the peculiar character of the 
man." 

In the same character opposite faculties and qual- 
ities are sometimes so blended as to give very myste- 
rious results. Every reader knows how difficult it 
often is to determine the irony or seriousness of 
Swift and De Foe, so very nicely they run together. 
Pure imagination is so realistic as to appear indubi- 
table truth. Take De Foe's history of the Plague. 
What boy ever doubted the truth of Robinson Cru- 
soe ? or, while he was reading them, the adventures of 
Lemuel Gulliver, grotesque and extravagant as they 
are ? You remember the story of the peasant and the 
Vicar of Wakefield. The dull rustic was a slow reader, 
and could get through but a few pages in a long even- 
ing ; yet he was absorbed by the story, and read it as if 



TYPES. 311 

it were a veritable history. A wag in the family, dis- 
cerning the situation, thought to amuse himself by 
putting back the book-mark each morning nearly to 
the point the man had read from the previous evening, 
so that it turned out he was all winter getting through 
the little volume. When he had finished it, the wag 
asked him his opinion of it. He answered that it was 
good, — that he had no doubt every word of it was 
true, — but it did seem to him there was some repeti- 
tion in it ! 

The author of Six Months at the White House re- 
lates an incident which illustrates how ignorance and 
superstition sometimes give birth to the sublimest elo- 
quence. Colonel McKaye had been speaking of the 
ideas of power entertained by the poor negro slaves. 
He said they had an idea of God, as the Almighty, 
and they had realized in their former condition the 
power of their masters. Up to the time of the arrival 
among them of the Union forces, they had no knowl- 
edge of any other power. Their masters fled upon the 
approach of our soldiers, and this gave the negroes a 
conception of a power greater than that exercised by 
them. This power they called " Massa Linkum." 
Their place of worship was a large building which 
they called "the praise house;" and the leader of 
the meeting, a venerable black man, was known as 
"the praise man." On a certain day, when there was 
quite a large gathering of the people, considerable con- 
fusion was created by different persons attempting to 
tell who and what " Massa Linkum " was. In the 
midst of the excitement the white-headed leader com- 
manded silence. " Brederin," said he, " you don't 



312 LIBRARY NOTES. 

know nosein' what you 're talkin' 'bout. Now, you 
just listen tome. Massa Linkum,he eberywhar. He 
know eberyting." Then, solemnly looking up, he 
added, " He walk de earf like de Lord ! " 

Curran, who was so merry and charming in conver- 
sation, was also very melancholy. He said he never 
went to bed in Ireland without wishing not to rise 
again. It seems to be a law of our nature that " as 
I high as we have mounted in delight, in our dejection 
^ do we sink as low." Burns expresses it, *' Chords 
t\ that vibrate SAveetest pleasure thrill the deepest notes 
j of woe ; " and Hood, " There 's not a string attuned 
/ to mirth, but has its chord in melancholy ; " and Bur- 
ton, "Naught so sweet as melancholy," naught " so 
damned as melancholy ; " and King Solomon, " I 
said of laughter that it is mad." 

It is narrated that one day Philip III., King of 
Spain, was standing in one of the balconies of his 
palace observing a young Spanish student, who was 
sitting in the sun and reading a book, while he was 
bursting out into fits of laughter. The further the stu- 
dent read, the more his gayety increased, until at last 
he was so violently excited that he let the book fall 
from his hands, and rolled on the ground in a state of 
intense hilarity. The king turned to his courtiers 
and said, " That young man is either mad, or he is 
reading Don Quixote." One of the guards of the pal- 
ace went to pick up the book, and found that his maj- 
esty had guessed rightly. Yet Miguel Cervantes, the 
author of this book which is so amusing, had dragged 
on the most wretched and melancholy existence. He 
was groaning and weeping while all Spain was laugh- 



TYPES. 313 

ing at tlie numerous adventures of the Knight of La 
Mancha and the wise sayings of Sancho Panza. 

The biographer of Grimaldi speaks of the devour- 
ing melancholy which pursued the celebrated actor 
whenever he was off the stage, or left to his own re- 
' sources ; and it is well known that Liston, whose face 
was sufficient to set an audience in a good humor, was 
a confirmed hypochondriac. It is said he used to sit 
up after midnight to read Young's Night Thoughts, 
delighting in its monotonous solemnity. 

" The gravest nations," says Landor, " have been 
the wittiest ; and in those nations some of the grav- 
est men. In England, Swift, and Addison ; in Spain, 
Cervantes. Rabelais and La Fontaine are recorded 
hj their countrymen to have been reveurs. Few men 
have been graver than Pascal ; few have been wit- 
tier." Robert Chambers tells in one of his essays of 
a person residing near London, who could make one's 
sides ache at any time with his comic songs, yet had 
so rueful, woe-begone a face that his friends addressed 
him by the name of Mr. Dismal. Nothing remains 
of Butler's private history but the record of his mis- 
eries ; and Swift, we are told, was never known to 
smile. Burns confessed in one of his letters that his 
design in seeking society was to fly from constitu- 
tional melancholy. '' Even in the hour of social 
mirth," he tells us, " my gayety is the madness of an 
intoxicated criminal under the hands of the execu- 
tioner." The most facetious of all Lamb's letters 
was written to Barton in a fit of the deepest melan- 
choly. 

Jerrold, it has been said, was a little ashamed of 



314 LIBRARY NOTES. 

the immense success of the Caudle Lectures, which, 
as social drolleries, set nations laughing. He took 
their celebrity rather sulkily. He did not like to be 
talked of as a funny man. His mixture of satire 
and kindliness reminded one of his friends of those 
lanes near Beyrout, in which you ride with the prickly- 
pear bristling alongside of you, and yet can pluck the 
grapes which force themselves among it from the 
fields. 

There is an account of a singer and his wife who 
were to sing a number of humorous couplets at a res- 
taurant in Leipsic. The wife made her appearance 
there at the appointed hour, but, owing to the unex- 
plained absence of her husband, she was compelled 
to amuse the visitors by singing couplets alone. 
While her droll performance was eliciting shouts of 
laughter, her husband hung himself in the court-yard 
of the restaurant. 

Some one said to Dr. Johnson that it seemed strange 
that he, who so often delighted his company by his 
lively conversation, should say he was miserable, 
" Alas ! it is all outside," replied the sage ; " I may 
be cracking my joke and cursing the sun : sun, how 
I hate thy beams ! " " Are we to think Pope was 
happy," said he, on another occasion, "because he 
says so in his writings? We see in his writings 
what he wished the state of his mind to appear. Dr. 
Young, who pined for preferment, talks with con- 
tempt of it in his writings, and affects to despise ev- 
erything he did not despise." The author of John 
Gilpin said of himself and his humorous poetry, 
" Strange as it may seem, the most ludicrous lines I 



TYPES. 315 

ever wrote have been when in the saddest mood, and 
but for that saddest mood, perhaps, would never have 
been written at all." Sir Walter Scott, in the height 
of his ill fortune, was ever giving vent in his diary or 
elsewhere to some whimsical outburst or humorous 
sally, and after an extra gay entry in his journal just 
before leaving his dingy Edinburgh lodgings for Ab- 
botsford, he follows it up next day with this bit of 
self-portraiture : " Anybody would think from the fal- 
de-ral conclusion of my journal of yesterday that I 
left town in a very good humor. But nature has given 
me a kind of buoyancy — I know not what to call it 
— that mingles with my deepest afflictions and most 
gloomy hours. I have a secret pride — I fancy it will 
be most truly termed — which impels me to mix with 
my distress strange snatches of mirth which have no 
mirth in them." 

" There have been times in my life," said Goethe, 
" when I have fallen asleep in tears ; but in my 
dreams the most charming forms have come to con- 
sole and to cheer me." 

We are told that after Scott began the Bride of 
Lammermoor, he had one of his terrible seizures of 
cramp, yet during his torment he dictated that fine 
novel ; and when he rose from his bed, and the pub- 
lished book was placed in his hands, " he did not," 
James Ballantyne explicitly assured Lockhart, " rec- 
ollect one single incident, character, or conversation 
it contained." 

Jean Paul wrote a great part of his comic romance 
(Nicholas Margraf) in an agony of heart-break from 
the death of his promising son Max. He could not, 



316 LIBRARY NOTES. 

one of his biographers says, bear the sight of any 
book his son had touched ; and the word philology 
(the science in which Max excelled) went through 
his heart like a bolt of ice. He had such wonderful 
power over himself as to go on with his comic ro- 
mance while his eyes continually dropped tears. He 
wept so much in secret that his eyes became impaired, 
and he trembled for the total loss of sight. Wine, 
that had previously, after long-sustained labor, been 
a cordial to him, he could not bear to touch ; and after 
employing the morning in writing, he spent the whole 
afternoon lying on the sofa in his wife's apartment, 
his head supported by her arm. 

Washington Irving completed that most extrava- 
gantly humorous of all his works — the History of 
New York — while he was suffering from the death 
of his sweetheart, Matilda Hoffman, which nearly 
broke his heart. He says, in a memorandum found 
amongst his private papers after his death, *' She was 
but about seventeen years old when she died. I can- 
not tell what a horrid state of mind I was in for a 
long time. I seemed to care for nothing ; the world 
was a blank to me. I went into the country, but 
could not bear solitude, yet could not enjoy society. 
There was a dismal horror continually in my mind, 
that made me fear to be alone. I had often to get 
up in the night, and seek the bedroom of my brother, 
as if the having a human being by me would relieve 
me from the frightful gloom of my own thoughts. 
.... When I became more calm and collected, I ap- 
plied myself, by way of occupation, to the finishing 
of my work. I brought it to a close, as well as I 



TYPES. 317 

could, and published it ; but the time and circum- 
stances in which it was produced rendered me almost 
unable to look upon it with satisfaction. Still it took 
with the public, and gave me celebrity, as an original 
work was something remarkable and uncommon in 

America I seemed to drift about without aim 

or object, at the mercy of every breeze ; my heart 
wanted anchorage. I was naturally susceptible, and 
tried to form other attachments, but my heart would 
not hold on ; it would continually roam to what it 
had lost ; and whenever there was a pause in the 
hurry of novelty and excitement, I would sink into 
dismal dejection. For years I could not talk on the 
subject of this hopeless regret ; I could not even men- 
tion her name ; but her image was continually before 
me, and I dreamt of her incessantly." 

Many of Hood's most humorous productions were 
dictated to his wife, while he himself was in bed, 
from distressing and protracted sickness. His own 
family was the only one which was not delighted with 
the Comic Annual, so well thumbed in every house. 
"We, ourselves," writes his son, "did not enjoy it 
till the lapse of many years had mercifully softened 
down some of the sad recollections connected with 
it." Fun and suffering seemed to be natural to him, 
and to be constantly helping each other. When a 
boy, he drew the figure of a demon with the smoke 
of a candle on the staircase ceiling near his bed room 
door, to frighten his brother. Unfortunately he for- 
got that he had done so, and, when he went to bed, 
succeeded in terrifying himself into fits almost — 
while his brother had not observed the picture. Joke 



318 LIBRARY NOTES. 

he would, suffering as he might be. It is recorded of 
him, that upon a mustard plaster being applied to his 
attenuated feet, as he lay in the direst extremity, he 
was heard feebly to remark that there was " very 
little meat for the mustard." But if his wit was 
marvelous, so was his pathos — tender beyond com- 
parison. His first child scarcely survived its birth. 
" In looking over some old papers," says his son, " I 
found a few tiny curls of golden hair, as soft as the 
finest silk, wrapped in a yellow and time-worn paper, 
inscribed in my father's handwriting : — 

" ' Little eyes that scarce did see, 

Little lips that never smiled ; 

Alas ! my little dear dead child, 
Death is thy father, and not me ; 
I but embraced thee soon as he ! ' '* 

Here are a few sentences from the long letters 
which the author of the Bridge of Sighs wrote to the 
children of his friend, Dr. Elliot, then residing at 
Sandgate, almost from his death-bed : " My dear 
Jeanie, — So you are at Sandgate ! Of course, 
wishing for your old playfellow to help you to make 
little puddles in the sand, and swing on the gate. 
But perhaps there are no sand and gate, at Sandgate, 

which, in that case, nominally tells us a fib I 

have heard that you bathe in the sea, which is very 
refreshing, but it requires care ; for if you stay under 
water too long, you may come up a mermaid, who is 
only half a lady, with a fish's tail — which she can 
boil if she likes. You had better try this with your 
doll, whether it turns her into half a ' doll-fin.' .... 
I hope you like the sea. I always did when I was a 



TYPES. 319 

child, which was about two years ago. Sometimes it 
makes such a fizzing and foaming, I wonder some of 
our London cheats do not bottle it up, and sell it for 
ginger-pop. When the sea is too rough, if you pour 
the sweet oil out of the cruet all over it, and wait for 
a calm, it will be quite smooth — much smoother than 

a dressed salad Do you ever see any boats or 

vessels ? And don't you wish, when you see a ship, 
that somebody was a sea-captain instead of a doctor, 
that he might bring you home a pet lion, or calf- 
elephant, ever so many parrots, or a monkey from 
foreign parts ? I knew a little girl who was promised 
a baby-whale by her sailor-brother, and who blubbered 
because he did not bring it. I suppose there are no 
whales at Sandgate, but you might find a seal about 
the beach ; or at least a stone for one. The sea-stones 
are not pretty when they are dry, but look beautiful 
when they are wet — and we can ahvays keep sucking 
them! "' To Jeanie's brother, among other things he 
writes, " I used to catch flat-fish with a very long 
string line. It was like swimming a kite. Once I 
caught a plaice, and seeing it all over red spots, thought 
I had caught the measles." To Mary Elliot, a still 
more youthful correspondent, he says, " I remember 
that when I saw the sea, it used sometimes to be very 
fussy and fidgety, and did not always wash itself quite 
clean ; but it was very fond of fun. Have the waves 
ever run after you yet, and turned your little two 
shoes into pumps, full of water ? Have you been 
bathed yet in the sea, and were you afraid ? I was 
the first time, and the time before that ; and, dear 
me, how I kicked and screamed — or, at least, meant 



320 LIBRARY NOTES. 

to scream ; but the sea, ships and all, began to run 
into my mouth, and so I shut it up. I think I see 
you being dipped into the sea, screwing your eyes up, 
and putting your nose, like a button, into your mouth, 
like a button-hole, for fear of getting another smell 
and taste. Did you ever try, like a little crab, to run 
two ways at once ? See if you can do it, for it is good 
fun; never mind tumbling over yourself a little at 
first. ; . . . And now good-by ; Fanny has made 
my tea, and I must drink it before it gets too hot, as 
we all were last Sunday week. They say the glass 
was eighty-eight in the shade, which is a great age. 
The last fair breeze I blew dozens of kisses for you, 
but the wind changed, and, I am afraid, took them 

all to Miss H , or somebody that it shouldn't." 

You remember the anecdote Southey repeats in 
his Doctor, of a physician who, being called in to 
an unknown patient, found him suffering under the 
deepest depression of mind, without any discoverable 
disease, or other assignable cause. The physician 
advised him to seek for cheerful objects, and recom- 
mended him especially to go to the theatre and see a 
famous actor then in the meridian of his powers, 
whose comic talents were unrivaled. Alas ! the come- 
dian who kept crowded theatres in a roar was this 
poor hypochondriac himself ! 



XII. 

CONDUCT. 

Hazlitt, in one of his discursive essays, says, " I 
stopped these two days at Bridgewater, and when I 
was tired of sauntering on the banks of its muddy 
river, returned to the inn and read Camilla. So 
have I loitered my life away, reading books, looking 
at pictures, going to plays, hearing, thinking, writing 
on what pleased me best. I have wanted only one 
thing to make me happy ; but wanting that, have 
wanted everything." Alas, who has not wanted one 
thing ? Fortunatus had a cap, which when he put 
on, and wished himself anywhere, behold he was 
there. Aladdin had a lamp, which if he rubbed, and 
desired anything, immediately it was his. If we each 
had both, there would still be something wanting — 
one thing more. Donatello's matchless statue of St. 
George " wanted one thing," in the opinion of Michel 
Angelo ; it wanted "the gift of speech." The poor 
widow in Holland that Pepys tells us about in his 
Diary, who survived twenty-five husbands, wanted 
one thing more, no doubt — perhaps one more hus- 
band. We never are, but always to be, blest. " A 
child," said the good Berthold Sachs, "thinks the 
stars blossom on the trees ; when he climbs to the 
tree-tops, he fancies they cluster on the spire ; when 
21 



322 LIBRARY NOTES. 

he climbs the spire, he finds, to reach them, he must 
leave the earth and go to heaven." There is an 
old German engraving, in the manner of Holbein, 
which represents an aged man near a grave, wringing 
his hands. Death, behind, directs his attention to 
heaven. What we have is nothing, what we want, 
everything. " All worldly things," says Baxter, " ap- 
pear most vain and unsatisfactory, when we have 
tried them most." The prize we struggled for, which 
filled our imagination, when attained was not much ; 
worthless in grasp, priceless in expectation. The 
one thing we want is one thing we have not — that we 
have not had. 

" I saw the little hoy ; 

I thought how oft that he 
Did wish of God, to scape the rod, 
A tall young man to be. 

" The young man eke that feels 
His bones with pain opprest, 
How he would be a rich old man, 
To live and lie at rest. 

" The rich old man that sees 
His end draw on so sore, 
How he would be a boy again, 
To live so much the more." 

This hunger, this hope, this longing, is our best 
possession at last, and fades not away, unsubstantial 
as it may seem. It builds for each one of us magnif- 
icent castles. " All the years of our youth and the 
hopes of our manhood are stored away, like precious 
stones, in the vaults ; and we know that we shall find 
everything convenient, elegant, and splendid, when 



CONDUCT. 323 

we come into possession." Curtis, in one of liis ex- 
quisite sketches, treats this element of us as no other 
author has. He calls it his Spanish property. " I 
am the owner," he says, " of great estates ; but the 
greater part are in Spain. It is a country famously 
romantic, and my castles are all of perfect proportions, 
and appropriately set in the most picturesque situa- 
tions. I have never been t^ Spain myself, but I have, 
naturally, conversed much with travelers to that 
country, although, I must allow, without deriving 
from them much substantial information about my 
property there. The wisest of them told me that 
there were more holders of real estate in Spain than 
in any other region he had ever • heard of, and they 
are all great proprietors. Every one of them pos- 
sesses a multitude of the stateliest castles. From con- 
versation with them you easily gather that each one 
considers his own castles much the largest and in the 

loveliest positions It is remarkable that none 

of the proprietors have ever been to Spain to take 
possession and report to the rest of us the state of 
our property there. I, of course, cannot go, I am too 
much engaged. So is Titbottom. And I find that 
it is the case with all the proprietors. We have so 
much to detain us at home that we cannot get away. 

It is always so with rich men It is not easy 

for me to say how I know so much as I certainly 
do about my castles in Spain. The sun always shines 
upon them. They stand large and fair in a luminous, 
golden atmosphere, a little hazy and dreamy, perhaps, 
like the Indian summer, but in which no gales blow 
and there are no tempests. All the sublime mount- 



324 LIBRARY NOTES. 

ains, and beautiful valleys, and soft landscapes, that 
I have not yet seen, are to be found in the grounds. 
They command a noble view of the Alps ; so fine, in- 
deed, that I should be quite content with the prospect 
of them from the highest tower of my castle, and not 
care to go to Switzerland. The neighboring ruins, too, 
are as picturesque as those of Italy, and my desire of 
standing in the Coliseum and of seeing the shattered 
arches of the aqueducts, stretching along the Cam- 
pagna and melting into the Alban Mount, is entirely 
quenched. The rich gloom of my orange groves is 
gilded by fruit as brilliant of complexion and exquisite 
of flavor as any that ever dark-eyed Sorrento girls, 
looking over the high plastered walls of Southern Italy, 
hand to the youthful travelers, climbing on donkeys up 
the narrow lane beneath. The Nile flows through my 
grounds. The Desert lies upon their edge, and Damas- 
cus stands in my garden. I am given to understand, 
also, that the Parthenon has been removed to my Span- 
ish possessions. The Golden Horn is my fish-preserve ; 
my flocks of golden fleece are pastured on the plain of 
Marathon, and the honey of Hymettus is distilled 
from the flowers that grow in the vale of Enna — 
all in my Spanish domains. From the windows of 
these castles look the beautiful women whom I have 
never seen, whose portraits the poets have painted. 
They wait for me there, and chiefly the fair-haired 
child, lost to my eye so long ago, now bloomed into 
an impossible beauty. The lights that never shone 
glance at evening in the vaulted halls, upon banquets 
that were never spread. The bands I have never col- 
lected play all night long, and enchant the brill- 



CONDUCT. 325 

iaiit company, that was never assembled, into silence. 
In the long summer mornings the children that I 
never had, play in the gardens that I never planted. 
.... I have often wondered how I shall ever reach 
my castles. The desire of going comes over me very 
strongly sometimes, and I endeavor to see how I can 
arrange my affairs so as to get away. To tell the 
truth, I am not quite sure of the route, — I mean, to 
that particular part of Spain in which my estates lie. 
I have inquired very particularly, but nobody seems 

to know precisely ' Will you tell me what 

you consider the shortest and safest route thither, 
Mr. Bourne ? for, of course, a man who drives such 
an immense trade with all parts of the world will 
know all that I have come to inquire.' ' My dear 
sir,' answered he, wearily, ' I have been trjang, all 
my life, to discover it ; but none of my ships have 
ever been there — none of my captains have any re- 
port to make. They bring me, as they brought my 
father, gold-dust from Guinea ; ivory, pearls, and 
precious stones from every part of the earth ; but not 
a fruit, not a solitary flower, from one of my castles 
in Spain. I have sent clerks, agents, and travelers 
of all kinds ; philosophers, pleasure-hunters, and in- 
valids, in all sorts of ships, to all sorts of places, 
but none of them ever saw or heard of my castles, 
except one young poet, and he died in a mad-house.' 
.... At length I resolved to ask Titbottom if he 
had ever heard of the best route to our estates. He 
said that he owned castles, and sometimes there was 

an expression in his face as if he saw them 

' I have never known but two men who reached 



326 LIBRARY NOTES. 

their estates in Spain.' ' Indeed,' said I, ' how did 
they go ? ' ' One went over the side of a ship, and 
the other out of a third story window,' answered 
Titbottom. 'And I know one man that resides upon 
his estates constantly,' continued he. ' Who is that? ' 
' Our old friend Slug, whom you may see any day 
at the asylum, just coming in from the hunt, or 
going to call upon his friend the Grand Lama, or 
dressing for the wedding of the Man in the Moon, 
or receiving an embassador from Timbuctoo. When- 
ever I go to see him. Slug insists that I am the 
pope, disguised as a journeyman carpenter, and he 
entertains me in the most distinguished manner. He 
always insists upon kissing my foot, and I bestow 
upon him, kneeling, the apostolic benediction. This 
is the only Spanish proprietor in possession, with 
whom I am acquainted.' .... Ah ! if the true 
history of Spain could be written, what a book were 

there ! " 

" Gayly bedight, 
A gallant knight, 
In snnshine and in shadow, 
Had journeyed long, 
Singing a song, 
In search of Eldorado. 

*' But he grew old, 

This knight so bold, 
And o'er his heart a shadow 

Fell as he found 

No spot of ground 
That looked like Eldorado. 

" And as his strength 
Failed him at length, 



CONDUCT. 327 

He met a pilgrim shadow : 

' Shadow,' said he, 

' Where can it be — 
This land of Eldorado?' 

" * Over the mountains 

Of the moon, 

Down the valley of shadow, 

Ride, boldly ride,' 

The shade replied, 

' If you seek for Eldorado ! * " 

Steele, in a paper of The Spectator, dilates in this 
vein. " I am," he says, " one of that species of men 
who are properly denominated castle-builders, who 
scorn to be beholden to the earth for a foundation, or 
dig in the bowels of it for materials ; but erect their 
structures in the most unstable of elements, the air ; 
fancy alone laying the line, marking the extent, and 
shaping the model. It would be difficult to enumer- 
ate what august palaces and stately porticoes have 
grown under my forming imagination, or what ver- 
dant meadows and shady groves have started into 
being by the powerful feat of a warm fancy. A 
castle-builder is ever just what he pleases, and as 
such I have grasped imaginary sceptres, and deliv- 
ered uncontrollable edicts, from a throne to which 
conquered nations yielded obeisance. There is no art 
or profession, whose most celebrated masters I have 
not eclipsed. Wherever I have afforded my salutary 
presence, fevers have ceased to burn and agues to 
shake the human fabric. When an eloquent fit has 
been upon me, an apt gesture and proper cadence 
has animated each sentence, and gazing crowds have 



328 LIBRARY NOTES. 

found their passions worked up into a rage, or soothed 
into a cahn. I am short, and not very well made ; 
yet upon sight of a fine woman, I have stretched into 
proper stature, and killed with a good air and mien. 
These are the gay phantoms that dance before my 
waking eyes, and compose my day-dreams. I should 
be the most contented happy man alive, were the 
chimerical happiness which sj)rings from the paint- 
ings of fancy less fleeting and transitory. But alas ! 
it is with grief of mind I tell you, the least breath 
of wind has often demolished my magnificent edifices, 
swept away my groves, and left no more trace of 
them than if they had never been. My exchequer 
has sunk and vanished by a rap on my door, the salu- 
tation of a friend has cost me a whole continent, and 
in the same moment I have been pulled by the sleeve, 
my crown has fallen from my head. The ill conse- 
quence of these reveries is inconceivably great, see- 
ing the loss of imaginary possessions makes impres- 
sions of real woe. Besides, bad economy is visible 
and apparent in builders of invisible mansions. My 
tenants' advertisements of ruins and dilapidations 
often cast a damp on my spirits, even in the instant 
when the sun, in all his splendor, gilds my Eastern 
palaces." 

" When I look around me," said Goethe, " and 
see how few of the companions of earlier years are 
left to me, I think of a summer residence at a bath- 
ing-place. When you arrive, you first become ac- 
quainted with those who have already been there 
some weeks, and who leave you in a few days. This 
separation is painful. Then you turn to the second 



CONDUCT. 329 

generation, with which yon live a good while, and be- 
come really intimate. Bnt this goes also, and leaves 
us lonely with the third, which comes just as we are 
going away, and with which we have, properly, noth- 
ing to do. . . . . I have ever been considered one of 
Fortune's chiefest favorites ; nor can I complain of 
the course my life has taken. Yet, truly, there has 
been nothing but toil and care ; and in my seventy - 
fifth year, I may say that I have never had four 
weeks of genuine pleasure. The stone was ever to 
be rolled up anew." 

" What a multitude of past friends can I number 
amongst the dead ! " exclaimed another venerable 
worthy in literature. " It is the melancholy conse- 
quence of old age ; if we outlive our feelings we are 
nothing worth ; if they remain in force, a thousand 
sad occurrences remind us that we live too long." It 
was Sir William Temple's opinion that " life is like 
wine ; who would drink it pure must not draw it to 
the dregs." Dr. Sherlock thought " the greatest 
part of mankind have great reason to be contented 
with the shortness of life, because they have no 
temptation to wish it longer." 

The following authentic memorial was found in the 
closet of the most illustrious of the caliphs, after his 
decease, who, during his life, enjoyed thousands of 
wives, millions upon millions of wealth, and was the 
object of universal admiration and envy : ''I have 
now reigned above fifty years in victory or peace ; 
beloved by my subjects, dreaded by my enemies, and 
respected by my allies. Riches and honor, power 
and pleasure, have waited on my call, nor does any 



330 LIBRARY NOTES. 

earthly blessing appear to have been wanting to my 
felicity. In this situation I have diligently numbered 
the days of pure and genuine happiness which have 
fallen to my lot : they amount to fourteen. O man, 
place not thy confidence in this present world ! " 

Voltaire makes Candide sit down to supper at Ven- 
ice with six strangers who were staying at the same 
hotel with himself, and as the servants, to his aston- 
ishment, addressed each of them by the title of " your 
majesty," he asked for an explanation of the pleas- 
antry. "I am not jesting," said the first, "I am 
Achmet III. ; I was sultan several years ; I dethroned 
my brother, and my nephew dethroned me. They 
have cut off the heads of my viziers ; I shall pass the 
remainder of my days in the old seraglio ; my nephew, 
the Sultan Mahmoud, sometimes permits me to travel 
for my health, and I have come to pass the Carnival 
at Venice." A young man who was close to Achmet 
spoke next, and said, " My name is Ivan ; I have 
been Emperor of all the Russias ; I was dethroned 
when I was in my cradle ; my father and my mother 
have been incarcerated ; I was brought up in prison ; 
I have sometimes permission to travel, attended by 
my keepers, and I have come to pass the Carnival 
at Venice." The third said, " I am Charles Edward, 
King of England ; my father has surrendered his 
rights to me ; I have fought to sustain them ; my 
vanquishers have torn out the hearts of eight hun- 
dred of my partisans ; I have been put into prison ; I 
am going to Rome to pay a visit to my father, de- 
throned like my grandfather and myself, and I have 
come to pass the Carnival at Venice." The fourth 



CONDUCT. 331 

then spoke, and said, " I am King of Poland ; the 
fortune of war has deprived me of my hereditary- 
states ; my father experienced the same reverses ; I 
resign myself to the will of Providence, like the Sul- 
tan Achmet, the Emperor Ivan, and the King Charles 
Edward, to whom God grant a long life ; and I have 
come to pass the Carnival at Venice." The fifth said, 
" I am also King of Poland ; I have lost my kingdom 
twice, but Providence has given me another in which 
I have done more good than all the kings of Sarmatia 
put together have ever done on the banks of the Vis- 
tula. I also resign myself to the will of Providence, 
and I have come to pass the Carnival at Venice." 
There remained a sixth monarch to speak. " Gentle- 
men," he said, " I am not as great a sovereign as the 
rest, but I, too, have been a king. I am Theodore, 
who was elected King of Corsica ; I was called ' your 
majesty,' and at present am hardly called ' sir ; ' I 
have caused money to be coined, and do not now pos- 
sess a penny ; I have had two secretaries of state, 
and have now scarcely a servant ; I have sat upon a 
throne, and was long in a prison in London, upon 
straw, and am afraid of being treated in the same 
manner here, although I have come, like your majes- 
ties, to pass the Carnival at Venice." The other five 
kings heard this confession with a noble compassion. 
Each of them gave King Theodore twenty sequins 
to buy some clothes and shirts. Candide presented 
him with a diamond worth two thousand sequins. 
" Who," said the five kings, "is this man who can 
afford to give a hundred times as much as any of us ? 
Are you, sir, also a king ? " " No, your majesties, 
and I have no desire to be." 



332 LIBRARY NOTES. 

Bacon's contemporary and cousin, Sir Robert Cecil, 
who was principal secretary of state to Queen Eliza- 
beth and James I., and ultimately lord high treas- 
urer, when he was acknowledged to be the ablest, as 
he appeared the most enviable, statesman of his time, 
wrote to a friend, " Give heed to one that hath sor- 
rowed in the bright lustre of a court and gone heavily 
over the best seeming fair ground. It is a great task 
to prove one's honesty, and yet not spoil one's fort- 
une I am pushed from the shore of comfort, 

and know not where the winds and waves of a court 
will bear me ; I know it bringeth little comfort on 
earth ; and he is, I reckon, no wise man that looketh 
this way to heaven." Bacon himself says, in one of 
his Essays, " Certainly great persons have need to 
borrow other men's opinions to think themselves 
happy ; for if they judge by their own feeling they 
cannot find it ; but if they think with themselves 
what others think of them, and that other men would 
fain be as they are, then they are happy as it were by 
report, when, perhaps, they find the contrary within ; 
for they are the first that find their own griefs, 
though they be the last that find their own faults." 

Madame de Stael, surrounded by the most brilliant 
men of genius, beloved by a host of faithful and de- 
voted friends, the centre of a circle of unsurpassed at- 
tractions, was yet doomed to mourn " the solitude of 
life." A short time before her death, she said to 
Chateaubriand, " I am now what I have always been 
— lively and sad." 

The illustrious Madame Recamier, "after forty 
years of unchallenged queenship in French society, 



CONDUCT. 333 

constantly enveloped in an intoxicating incense of 
admiration and love won not less by her goodness and 
purity than by her beauty and grace," writes thus 
from Dieppe to her niece : " I am here in the centre 
of fetes, princesses, illuminations, spectacles. Two of 
my windows face the ball-room, the other two front 
the theatre. Amidst this clatter I am in a perfect 
solitude. I sit and muse on the shore of the ocean. 
I go over all the sad and joyous circumstances of my 
life. I hope you will be more happy than I have 
been." 

Madame de Pompadour, recalling her follies, serious 
matters they were to her, said to the Prince de Sou- 
bise, " It is like reading a strange book ; my life is 
an improbable romance ; I do not believe it." " Gray 
hairs," to quote Thackeray, '* had come on like day- 
light streaming in, — dayhght and a headache with 
it. Pleasure had gone to bed with the rouge on her 
cheeks." 

" Ah ! " wrote also Madame de Maintenon to her 
niece, " alas that I cannot give you my experience ; 
that I could only show you the weariness of soul by 
which the great are devoured — the difficulty which 
they find in getting through their days ! Do you 
not see how they die of sadness in the midst of that 
fortune which has been a burden to them ? I have 
been young and beautiful ; I have tasted many pleas- 
ures ; I have been universally beloved. At a more 
advanced age, I have passed years in the intercourse 
of talent and wit, and I solenlnly protest to you that 
all conditions leave a frightful void." 

Coleridge sums up all more wisely. " I have 



334 LIBRARY NOTES. 

known," he says, " what the enjoyments and ad- 
vantages of this Ufe are, and what the more refined 
pleasures which learning and intellectual power can 
bestow ; and with all the experience that more than 
three-score years can give, I now, on the eve of my 
departure, declare to you that health is a great bless- 
ing, — competence obtained by honorable industry a 
great blessing, — and a great blessing it is to have 
kind, faithful, and loving friends and relatives ; but 
that the greatest of all blessings, as it is the most en- 
nobling of all privileges, is to be indeed a Christian." 
" We are born and we live so unhappily that the 
accomplishment of a desire appears to us a falsehood, 
the realization of hope a deception, as if our sad ex- 
perience had taught us the bitter lesson that in the 
world nothing is true but sorrow." " Who ordered 
toil," said Thackeray, " as the condition of life, or- 
dered weariness, ordered sickness, ordered poverty, 
failure, success, — to this man a foremost place, to the 
other a nameless struggle with the crowd ; to that a 
shameful fall, or paralyzed limb, or sudden accident ; 
to each some work upon the ground he stands on, 
until he is laid beneath it." "Nature," says Pliny, 
" makes us buy her presents at the price of so many 
sufferings, that it is dubious whether she deserves 
most the name of a parent or a step-mother." " Sol- 
omon and Job judged the best and spake the truest," 
thought Pascal, " of human misery ; the former the 
most happy, the latter the most unfortunate of man- 
kind ; the one acquainted by long experience with the 
vanity of pleasure, the other with the reality of afflic- 
tion and pain." 



CONDUCT. 335 

" Let a man examine his own thoughts," said the 
same profound Christian philosopher, '' and he will 
always find them employed about the time past or to 
come. We scarce bestow a glance upon the present ; 
or, if we do, 't is only to borrow light from hence to 
manage and direct the future. The present is never 
the mark of our designs. We use both past and 
present as our means and instruments, but the future 
only as our object and aim. Thus we never live, but 
we ever hope to live ; and under this continual dis- 
position and preparation to happiness, 't is certain we 
can never be actually happy, if our hopes are termi- 
nated with the scene of this life." 

The Thracians, according to Pliny, estimated their 
lives mathematically, making careful study and 
count of each day before any event of it was for- 
gotten. " Every day they put into an urn either a 
black or a white pebble, to denote the good or bad 
fortune of that day; at last they separated these 
pebbles, and upon comparing the two numbers to- 
gether, they formed their judgment of the whole 
of their lives." But time, past or present, — time, 
what is it ? " Who can readily and briefly explain 
this ? " inquired St. Augustine. " Who can even in 
thought comprehend it, so as to utter a word about 
it ? But what in discourse do we mention more 
familiarly and knowingly, than time ? And we un- 
derstand, when we speak of it ; we understand, also, 
when we hear it spoken of by another. What then 
is time? If no one asks me, I know ; if I explain it 
to one that asketh, I know not ; yet I say boldly, 
that I know that if nothing passed away, time passed 



336 LIBRAEY NOTES. 

were not ; and if nothing were coming, a time to 
come were not ; and if nothing were, time present 
were not. Those two times then, past and to come, 
how are they, seeing the past now is not, and that to 
come is not yet ? But the present, should it always 
be present, and never pass into time past, verily it 
should not be time, but eternity. If, therefore, time 
present, in order to be time at all, comes into exist- 
ence only because it passes into time past, how can 
we say that that is in existence, whose cause of being 
is that it shall not be ? How is it that we cannot 
truly say that time is, but because it is tending not to 
be ? " Comprehend this, and you see how easy a 
thing it was for the Thracians to '' form a judgment 
of the whole of their lives" — to strike a nice bal- 
ance between their happiness and misery. 

But happiness is as illusive as time, and is proved 
as perspicuously to be but a thing of memory, by the 
same venerable saint. " Where, then, and when," he 
says in his famous Confessions, " did I experience my 
happy life, that I should remember and love and long 
for it? Nor is it I alone, or some few besides, but 
we all would fain be happy ; which, unless by some 
certain knowledge we knew, we should not with so 
certain a will desire. But how is this, that if two 
men be asked whether they would go to the wars, 
one, perchance, would answer that he would, the 
other that he would not ; but if they were asked 
whether they would be happy, both would instantly, 
without any doubting, say they would ; and for no 
other reason would the one go to the wars, and the 
other not, but to be happy. Is it, perchance, that as 



CONDUCT. 337 

one looks for his joy in this thing, another in that, 
all agree in their desire of being happy, as they 
would agree, if they were asked, that they wished 
to have joy, and this joy they call a happy life? Al- 
though, then, one obtains the joy by one means, 
another by another, all have one end, which they 
strive to attain, namely, joy. Which being a thing 
which all must say they have experienced, it is, there- 
fore, found in the memory, and recognized when- 
ever the name of a happy life is mentioned." Now 
do you know, perhaps, what happiness is. 

Coming down from Augustine to Helps, — " The 
wonder is that we live on from day to day learning 
so little the art of life. We are constantly victims 
of every sort of worry and petty misery, which it 
would seem a little bit of reflection and sensible con- 
duct would remove. We constantly hang together 
when association only produces unhappiness. We 

know it, but do not remedy it We have no 

right to expect to meet many sympathetic people in 
the course of our lives. [" To get human beings to- 
gether who ought to be together," said Sydney 
Smith, ''is a dream."] .... The pleasant man to 
you is the man you can rely upon ; who is tolerant, 

forbearing, and faithful Again, the habit of 

over-criticism is another hinderance to pleasantness. 
We are not fond of living always with our judges ; 
and daily life will not bear the unwholesome scrutiny 
of an over-critical person." The petty annoyances 
and wanton bitternesses of life make us, in our im- 
patience, sometimes wish to fly from all companion- 
ship ; they contributed, no doubt, — he himself could 

22 



338 LIBRARY NOTES. 

not tell how mnch, — to make the author of the 
Genius of Solitude exclaim, with so much feeling, 
" Happy is he who, free from the iron visages that 
hurt him as they pass in the street, free from the 
vapid smiles and sneers of frivolous people, draws his 
sufficingness from inexhaustible sources always at his 
command when he is alone. Blest is he who, when 
disappointed, can turn from the affectations of an 
empty world and find solace in the generous sinceri- 
ties of a full heart. To roam apart by the tinkling 
rill, to crouch in the grass where the crocus grows, to 
lie amid the clover where the honey-bee hums, gaze 
off into the still deeps of summer blue, and feel that 
your harmless life is gliding over the field of time as 
noiselessly as the shadow of a cloud ; or, snuggled in 
furs, to trudge through the drifts amidst the un- 
spotted scenery of winter, when storm unfurls his 
dark banner in the sky, and snow has camped on the 
hills and clad every stone and twig with his ermine, 
is pleasure surpassing any to be won in shallowly con- 
sorting with mobs of men." 

" The longer I live," said Maurice de Gu^rin, 
" and the clearer I discern between true and false in 
society, the more does the inclination to live, not as a 
savage or a misanthrope, but as a solitary man on the 
frontiers of society, on the outskirts of the world, 
gain strength and grow in me. The birds come and 
go, and make nests around our habitations ; they are 
fellow-citizens of our farms and hamlets with us : but 
they take their flight in a heaven which is boundless ; 
but the hand of God alone gives and measures to 
them their daily food ; but they build their nests in 



CONDUCT. 339 

the heart of the thick bushes, and hang them in the 
height of the trees. So would I, too, live, hovering 
round society, and having always at my back a field 
of liberty vast as the sky." 

A strange instance of abandonment of the world 
for a solitary life is given in the history of Henry 
Welby, the Hermit of Grub Street, who died in 1638, 
at the age of eighty-four. This example affords " an 
eccentric illustration of one of those phases of human 
nature out of which the anchoretic life has sprung. 
When forty years old, Welby was assailed, in a mo- 
ment of anger, by a younger brother with a loaded 
pistol. It flashed in the pan. ' Thinking of the dan- 
ger he had escaped, he fell into many deep considera- 
tions, on the which he grounded an irrevocable reso- 
lution to live alone.' He had wealth and position, 
and was of a social temper ; but the shock he had 
undergone had made him distrustful and meditative, 
not malignant nor wretched, and engendered in him 
a purpose of surprising tenacity. He had three cham- 
bers, one within another, prepared for his solitude ; 
the first for his diet, the second for his lodging, the 
third for his study. While his food was set on the 
table by one of his servants, he retired into his sleep- 
ing-room ; and, while his bed was making, into his 
study ; and so on, until all was clear. ' There he set 
up his rest, and, in forty-four years, never upon any 
occasion issued out of those chambers till he was 
borne thence upon men's shoulders. Neither, in all 
that time, did any human being — save, on some rare 
necessity, his ancient maid-servant — look upon his 
face.' Supplied with the best new books in various 



340 LIBEARY NOTES. 

languages, he devoted himself unto prayers and read- 
ing. He inquired out objects of charity and sent 
them relief. He would spy from his chamber, by a 
private prospect into the street, any sick, lame, or 
weak passing by, and send comforts and money to 
them. ' His hair, by reason no barber came near 
him for the space of so many years, was so much 
overgrown at the time of his death, that he appeared 
rather like an eremite of the wilderness than an in- 
habitant of a city.' " 

Welby must have possessed the jewel which this 
incident, related by Izaak Walton in his Angler, dis- 
covers to be so indispensable. " I knew a man," he 
says, " that had health and riches and several houses, 
all beautiful and ready furnished, and would often 
trouble himself and family to be removing from one 
house to another : and, being asked by a friend why 
he removed so often from one house to another, re- 
plied, ' It was to find content in some one of them.' 
' Content,' said his friend, ' ever dwells in a meek and 
quiet soul.' " 

" Tt 's no in titles nor in rank ; 
It 's no in wealth, like Lon'on bank, 

To purchase peace and rest ; 
It 's no in making muckle mair: 
It 's no in books ; it 's.no in lear, 

To make us truly blest : 
If happiness ha'e not her seat 

And centre in the breast, 
We may be wise, or rich, or great, 

But never can be blest: 
Nae treasures, nor pleasures, 
Could make us happy lang; 
The heart ay 's the part ay, 

That makes us right or wrang." 



CONDUCT. 341 

" Out of mud springs the lotus flower ; out of clay 
comes gold and many precious things ; out of oysters 
the pearls ; brightest silks, to robe fairest forms, are 
spun by a worm ; bezoar from the bull, musk from 
the deer, are produced ; from a stick is born flame ; 
from the jungle comes sweetest honey. As from 
sources of little worth come the precious things of 
eartET^even so is it with hearts" that hold their fortune 
within. They need not lofty birth or noble kin. 
Their victory is recorded." 

" By two things," says the author of the Imitation, 
" a man is lifted up from things earthly, namely, by 
simplicity and purity. A pure heart penetrateth 
heaven and hell. Such as every one is inwardly, so 
he judgeth outwardly. If there be joy in the world, 

surely a man of a pure heart possesseth it Let 

not thy peace depend on the tongues of men ; for 
whether they judge well of thee or ill, thou art not 
on that account other than thyself. He that careth 
not to please men, nor feareth to displease them, shall 
enjoy much peace He enjoyeth great tran- 
quillity of heart, that careth neither for the praise 
nor dispraise of men. If thou consider what thou art 
in thyself, thou wilt not care what men say of thee. 
Man looketh on the countenance, but God on the 
heart. Man considereth the deeds, but God weigheth 
the intentions." '' One night, Gabriel, from his seat 
in paradise, heard the voice of God sweetly respond- 
ing to a human heart. The angel said, ' Surely this 
must be an eminent servant of the Most High, whose 
spirit is dead to lust and lives on high.' The angel 
hastened over land and sea to find this man, but could 



342 LIBRARY NOTES. 

not find him in the earth or hea\^ens. At last he ex- 
claimed, ' O Lord, show me the way to the object of 
thy love ! ' God answered, ' Turn thy steps to yon 
village, and in that pagoda thou shalt behold him.' 
The angel sped to the pagoda, and therein found a 
solitary man kneeling before an idol. Returning, he 
cried, ' O master of the world I hast thou looked with 
love on a man who invokes an idol in a pagoda ? ' 
God said, ' I consider not the error of ignorance : this 
heart, amid its darkness, hath the highest place.' " 

Anaxagoras, whose disciples were Socrates, and 
Pericles, and Euripides, in reply to a question, said he 
believed those to be most happy who seem least to be 
so ; and that we must not look among the rich and 
great for persons who taste true happiness, but among 
those who till a small piece of ground, or apply them- 
selves to the sciences, without ambition. " The fair- 
est lives, in my opinion," says Montaigne, " are those 
which regularly accommodate themselves to the com- 
mon and human model, without miracle, without ex- 
travagance." " If some great men," said Mandeville, 
" had not a superlative pride, and everybody under- 
stood the enjoyment of life, who would be a lord 
chancellor, a prime minister, or a grand pensionary? " 
There is in existence a precious old album containing 
the handwriting of many renowned men, such as Lu- 
ther, Erasmus, Mosheim, and others. The last-men- 
tioned has written, in Latin, the following remarkable 
words : " Renown is a source of toil and sorrow ; ob- 
scurity is a source of happiness." " Does he not drink 
more sweetly that takes his beverage in an earthen 
vessel," asks Jeremy Taylor, "than he that looks and 



CONDUCT. 343 

searches into his golden chaliceSj for fear of poison, 
and looks pale at every sudden noise, and sleeps in 
armor, and trusts nobody, and does not trust God for 
safety ? " 

" The world," said Goethe, " could not exist, if it 
were not so simple. This ground has been tilled a 
thousand years, yet its powers remain ever the same ; 
a little rain, a little sun, and each spring it grows 
green again." 

" Everything has its own limits," says Hazlitt, " a 
little centre of its own, round which it moves ; so 
that our true wisdom lies in our keeping in our own 
walk in life, however humble or obscure, and being 
satisfied if we can succeed in it. The best of us can 
do no more, and we shall only become ridiculous or 
unhappy by attempting it. We are ashamed because 
we are at a loss in things to which we have no pre- 
tensions, and try to remedy our mistakes by commit- 
ting greater. An overweening vanity or self-opinion 
is, in truth, often at the bottom of this weakness ; 
and we shall be most likely to conquer the one by 
eradicating the other, or restricting it within due and 
moderate bounds." 

" From my tutor," said the good emperor Marcus 
Aurelius, " I learnt endurance of labor, and to want 
little, and to work with my own hands, and not to 
meddle with other people's affairs, and not to be ready 
to listen to slander." 

" Ah ! " exclaimed the Attic Philosopher, " if men 
but knew in what a small dwelling joy can live, and 
how little it costs to furnish it ! . . . . Does a man 
drink more when he drinks from a large glass ? From 



344 LIBRARY NOTES. 

whence comes tliat universal dread of mediocrity, the 
fruitful mother of peace and liberty ? Ah ! there is 
the evil which, above every other, it should be the 
aim of both public and private education to antici- 
pate ! If that were got rid of, what treasons would 
be spared, what baseness avoided, what a chain of 
excess and crime would be forever broken ! We 
award the palm to charity, and to self-sacrifice : but, 
above all, let us award it to moderation, for it is the 
great social virtue. Even when it does not create the 
others, it stands instead of them." Socrates used to 
say that the man who ate with the greatest appetite 
had the least need of delicacies ; and that he who 
drank with the greatest appetite was the least in- 
clined to look for a draught which is not at hand ; and 
that those who want fewest things are nearest to the 
gods. Michel Angelo seldom partook of the enjoy- 
ments of the table, and used to say, " However rich 
I may have been, I have always lived as a poor 
man." Epicurus said, " I feed sweetly upon bread 
and water, those sweet and easy provisions of the 
body, and I defy the pleasures of costly provisions." 
" No man needs to flatter," says Jeremy Taylor, 
" if he can live as nature did intend. He need not 
swell his accounts, and intricate his spirit with arts of 
subtlety and contrivance ; he can be free from fears, 
and the chances of the world cannot concern him. 
All our trouble is from within us ; and if a dish of 
lettuce and a clear fountain can cool all my heats, so 
that I shall have neither thirst nor pride, lust nor re- 
venge, envy nor ambition, I am lodged in the bosom 
of fehcity." 



CONDUCT. 345 

" I should rather say," says Froude, " that the 
Scots had been an unusually happy people. Intelli- 
gent industry, the honest doing of daily work, with a 
sense that it must be done well, under penalties ; the 
necessaries of life moderately provided for ; and a 
sensible content with the situation of life in which 
men are born — this through the week, and at the end 
of it the Cotter's Saturday Night — the homely fam- 
ily, gathered reverently and peacefully together, and 
irradiated with a sacred presence. Happiness ! such 
happiness as we human creatures are likely to know 
upon this world will be found there, if anywhere." 

" On the Simplon," says a German traveler, "amid 
the desert of snow and mist, in the vicinity of a ref- 
uge, a boy and his little sister were journeying up the 
mountain by the side of our carriage. Both had on 
their backs little baskets filled with wood, which they 
had gathered in the lower mountains, where there is 
still some vegetation. The boy gave us some specimens 
of rock crystal and other stone, for which we gave him 
some small coins. The delight with which he cast 
stolen glances at his money, as he passed by our car- 
riage, made upon me an indelible impression. Never 
before had I seen such a heavenly expression of felic- 
ity. I could not but reflect that God had placed all 
sources and capabilities for happiness in the human 
heart ; and that, with respect to happiness, it is per- 
fectly indifferent how and where one dwells." 

"' A man who is gifted with worldly qualities and 
accommodations is armed with hands, as a ship with 
grappling-irons, I'eady to catch hold of, and make 
himself fast to everything he comes in contact with, 



346 LIBRARY NOTES. 

and such a man, with all these properties of adhesion, 
has also the property, like the polypus, of a most mi- 
raculous and convenient indivisibility ; cut off his hold 
— nay, cut him how you will, he is still a polypus, 
whole and entire. Men of this sort still work their 
way out of their obscurity like cockroaches out of the 
hold of a ship, and crawl into notice, nay, even into 
kings' palaces, as the frogs did into Pharaoh's ; the 
happy faculty of noting times and seasons, and a lucky 
promptitude to avail themselves of moments with ad- 
dress and boldness, are alone such all-sufl&cient requi- 
sites, such marketable stores of worldly knowledge, 
that, although the minds of those who own them shall 
be, as to all the liberal sciences, a rasa tabula^ yet, 
knowing these things needful to be known, let their 
difficulties and distresses be what they may, though 
the storm of adversity threatens to overwhelm them, 
they are in a life-boat, buoyed up by corks, and can- 
not sink. These are the stray children turned loose 
upon the world, whom fortune, in her charity, takes 
charge of, and for whose guidance in the by-ways and 
cross-roads of their pilgrimage she sets up fairy finger- 
posts, discoverable by those whose eyes are near the 
ground, but unperceived by such whose looks are 
raised above it." 

Wordsworth's man-servant, James, was brought up 
in a work-house, and at nine years of age was turned 
out of the house with two shillings in his pocket. 
When without a sixpence, he was picked up by a 
farmer, who took him into his service on condition that 
all his clothes should be burnt (they were so filthy) ; 
and he was to pay for his new clothes out of his 



CONDUCT. 347 

wages of two pounds ten shillings per annum. Here 
he stayed as long as he was wanted. " I have been 
so lucky," said James, '' that I was never out of a 
place a day in my life, for - 1 was always taken into 
service immediately. I never got into a scrape, or 
was drunk in my life, for I never taste any liquor. So 
that I have often said, I consider myself as a favorite 
of fortune ! " This is like Goldsmith's cripple in the 
park, who, remarking upon his appealing wretched- 
ness, said, " 'T is not every man that can be born with 
a golden spoon in his mouth." 

"Arrogance," said Goethe, "is natural to youth. 
A man believes, in his youth, that the world properly 
began with him, and that all exists for his sake. In 
the East, there was a man who, every morning, col- 
lected his people about him, and never would go to 
work till he had commanded the sun to arise. But 
he was wise enough not to speak his command till the 
sun of its own accord was ready to appear." " At 
the outset of life," says Hazlitt, " our imagination 
has a body to it. We are in a state between sleeping 
and waking, and have indistinct but glorious glimpses 
of strange shapes, and there is always something to 
come better than what we see. As in our dreams the 
fullness of the blood gives warmth and reality to the 
coinage of the brain, so in youth our ideas are clothed, 
and fed, and pampered with our good spirits ; we 
breathe thick with thoughtless happiness, the weight 
of future years presses on the strong pulses of the 
heart, and we repose with undisturbed faith in truth 
and good. As we advance, we exhaust our fund of 
enjoyment and of hope. We are no longer wrapped 



348 LIBRARY NOTES. 

ill lamb's-wool, lulled in Elysium. As we taste the 
pleasures of life, their spirit evaporates, the sense palls, 
and nothing is left but the phantoms, the lifeless 
shadows of what has been ! " 

" There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, 
The earth, and every common sight, 
To me did seem 
Apparel'd in celestial Hght, 
The glory and the freshness of a dream. 
It is not now as it has been of yore ; 
Turn wheresoe'er I may, 
By night or day, 
The^hings which I have seen I now can see no more. 

" The rainbow comes and goes, 
And lovely is the rose ; 
The moon doth with delight 
Look round her when the heavens are bare; 
Waters on a starry night 
Are beautiful and fair ; 
The sunshine is a glorious birth ; 
But yet I know, where'er I go, 
That there hath passed away a glory from the earth." 

" Why," asks Souvestre, "- is there so much confi- 
dence at first, so much doubt at last? Has, then, the 
knowledofe of life no other end but to make it unfit 
for happiness? Must we condemn ourselves to igno- 
rance if we would preserve hope ? Is the world, and 
is the individual man, intended, after all, to find rest 
only in an eternal childhood ? " 

^' If the world does improve on the whole, yet youth 
must always begin anew, and go through the stages of 
culture from the beginning." Yet, " 't is a great ad- 



CONDUCT. 349 

vantage of rank," says Pascal, " that a man at eight- 
een or twenty shall be allowed the same esteem and 
deference which another purchaseth by his merit at 
fifty. Here are thirty years gained at a stroke." 

" The whole employment of men's lives," said the 
same thinker, " is to improve their fortunes ; and yet 
the title by which they hold all, if traced to its origin, 
is no more than the pure fancy of the legislators : but 
their possession is still more precarious than their 
right, and at the merc}^ of a thousand accidents : nor 
are the treasures of the mind better insured ; while 
a fall, or a fit of sickness may bankrupt the ablest 
understanding C93sar Avas too old, in my opin- 
ion, to amuse himself with projecting the conquest of 
the world. Such an imagination was excusable in 
Alexander, a prince full of youth and fire, and not 
easy to be checked in his hopes. But Caesar ought to 
have been more grave." 

" Knowledge has two extremities, which meet and 
touch each other," says Pascal, again. " The first of 
them is pure, natural ignorance, such as attends every 
man at his birth. The other is the perfection attained 
by great souls, who, having run through the circle of 
all that mankind can know, find at length that they 
know nothing, and are contented to return to that ig- 
norance from which they set out. Ignorance that 
thus knows itself is a wise and learned ignorance." 

" That is ever the difference," said Emerson, " be- 
tween the wise and the unwise : the latter wonders 
at what is unusual, the wise man wonders at the 
usual." 

It has been said that the visitor, climbing the white 



350 LIBRARY NOTES. 

roof of the Milan cathedral, and gazing on the forest 
of statues, " feels as though a flight of angels had 
alighted there and been struck to marble." "At the 
top of his mind," says Alger, " the devout scholar 
has a holy of holies, a little pantheon set round with 
altars and the images of the greatest men. Every 
day, putting on a priestly robe, he retires into this 
temple and passes before its shrines and shapes. 
Here he feels a thrill of awe ; there he lays a burn- 
ing aspiration ; further on he swings a censer of rev- 
erence. To one he lifts a look of love ; at the feet 
of another he drops a grateful tear ; and before an- 
other still, a flush of pride and joy suffuses him. 
They smile on him : sometimes they speak and wave 
their solemn hands. Always they look up to the 
Highest. Purified and hallowed, he gathers his soul 
together, and comes away from the worshipful inter- 
course, serious, serene, glad, and strong." 

Hear this lofty strain of the old heathen emperor 
Marcus Aurelius : " Short is the little which remains 
to thee of life. Live as on a moantain. Let men 
see, let them know, a real man, who lives as he was 
meant to live. If they cannot endure him, let them 
kill him. For that is better than to live as men do." 

"As soon as a man," says Max Miiller, "becomes 
conscious of himself as distinct from all other things 
and persons, he at the same moment becomes con- 
scious of a Higher Self, a higher power, without 
which he feels that neither he nor anything else would 
have any life or reality." 

" To live, indeed," says Sir Thomas Browne, " is to 
be again ourselves, which being not only a hope but 



CONDUCT. 351 

an evidence in noble believers, 't is all one to lie in 
St. Innocent's church-yard, as in the sands of Egypt ; 
ready to be anything, in the ecstasy of being ever, 
and as content with six feet as the moles of Adri- 
anus." 

" At the age of seventy-five," says Goethe, " one 
must, of course, think frequently of death. But this 
thought never gives me the least uneasiness, I am 
so full}^ convinced that the soul is indestructible, and 
that its activity will continue through eternity. It is 
like the sun, which seems to our earthly eyes to set 
in night, but is in reality gone to diffuse its light else- 
where." 

" The soul's dark cottage, battered and decayed, 
Lets in new light thro' chinks that time has made; 
Stronger by weakness, wiser men become 
As they draw near to their eternal home. 
Leaving the old, both worlds at once they view 
That stand upon the threshold of the new." 

Among the poems of Mrs. Barbauld is a stanza on 
Life, written in extreme old age. Madame D'Arblay 
told the poet Rogers that she repeated it every night. 
Wordsworth once said to a visitor, " Repeat me that 
stanza by Mrs. Barbauld." His friend did so. Words- 
worth made him repeat it again. And so he learned 
it by heart. He was at the time walking in his sit- 
ting-room at Rydal, with his hands behind him, and 
was heard to mutter to himself, " I am not in the 
habit of grudging people their good things, but I wish 
I had written those lines." 

" Life ! we 've been long together, 
Thro' pleasant and thro' cloudy weather: 



352 LIBRARY NOTES. 

'T is hard to part when friends are dear, 
Perhaps 't will cost a sigh, a tear: 
Then steal away, give little warning, 

Choose thine own time ; 
Say not good night, but in some brighter clime 
Bid me good morning." 



XIII. 

RELIGION. 

*' Ah ! " siglied Shelley to Leigli Hunt, as the organ 
was playing in the cathedral at Pisa, '' what a divine 
religion might be found out if charity were really 
made the principle of it instead of faith." 

" In the seventeenth century," says Dean Stanley, 
in one of his Lectures on the Church of Scotland, 
*' the minister of the parish of Anworth was the fa- 
mous Samuel Rutherford, the great religious oracle of 
the Covenanters and their adherents. It was, as all 
readers of his letters will remember, the spot which 
he most loved on earth. The very swallows and spar- 
rows which found their nests in the church of An- 
worth were, when far away, the objects of his affec- 
tionate envy. Its hills and valleys were the witnesses 
of his ardent devotion when living ; they still retain 
his memory with unshaken fidelity. It is one of the 
traditions thus cherished on the spot, that on a Sat- 
urday evening, at one of those family gatherings 
whence, in the language of the good Scottish poet, 

* Old Scotia's grandeur springs,' 
when Rutherford was catechising his children and 
servants, that a stranger knocked at the door of the 
manse, and begged shelter for the night. The min- 
ister kindly received him, and asked him to take his 

23 



354 LIBRARY NOTES. 

place amongst the family and assist at their religious 
exercises. It so happened that the question in the. 
catechism which came to the stranger's turn was that 
which asks, ' How many commandments are there ? ' 
He answered, ' Eleven.' ' Eleven ! ' exclaimed Ruth- 
erford ; ' I am surprised that a man of your age and 
appearance should not know better. What do you 
mean ? ' And he answered, 'A new commandment I 
give unto you, that ye love one another ; as I have 
loved you, that ye also love one another. By this 
shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye 
have love one to another.' Rutherford was much im- 
pressed by the answer, and they retired to rest. The 
next morning he rose early to meditate on the serv- 
ices of the day. The old manse of Anworth stood, — 
its place is still pointed out, — in the corner of afield, 
under the hill-side, and thence a long, winding, wooded 
path, still called Rutherford's Walk, leads to the 
church. Through this glen he passed, and, as he 
threaded his way through the thicket, he heard 
amongst the trees the voice of the stranger at his 
morning devotions. The elevation of the sentiments 
and of the expressions convinced him that it was no 
common man. He accosted him, and the traveler 
confessed to him that he was no other than the great 
divine and scholar. Archbishop Usher, the Primate 
of the Church of Ireland, one of the best and most 
learned men of his age, who well fulfilled that new 
commandment in the love which he won and which 
he bore to others ; one of the few links of Christian 
charity between the fierce contending factions of that 
time, devoted to King Charles I. in his life-time, and 



RELIGION. 355 

honored in his grave by the Protector Cromwell. He 
it was who, attracted by Rutherford's fame, had thus 
come in disguise to see him in the privacy of his own 
home. The stern Covenanter welcomed the stranger 
prelate ; side by side they pursued their way along 
Rutherford's Walk to the little church, of which the 
ruins still remain ; and in that small Presbyterian 
sanctuary, from Rutherford's rustic pulpit, the arch- 
bishop preached to the people of Anworth on the 
words which had so startled his host the evening 
before : ' A new commandment I give unto you, that 
ye love one another ; as I liave loved you, that ye also 
love one another.' " 

In a legend which St. Jerome has recorded, and 
which, says the same writer, in his Essays on the 
Apostolic Age, is " not the less impressive because so 
familiar to us, we see the aged Apostle (John) borne 
in the arms of his disciples into the Ephesian assem- 
bly, and there repeating over and over again the same 
saying, ' Little children, love one another ; ' till, when 
asked whj^ he said this and nothing else, he replied in 
those well-known words, fit indeed to be the farewell 
speech of the beloved disciple, * Because this is our 
Lord's command, and if you fulfill this, nothing else 
is needed.' " 

"An acceptance of the sentiment of love through- 
out Christendom for a season," says Emerson, " would 
bring the felon and the outcast to our side in tears, 
with the devotion of his faculties to our service. Love 
would put a new face on this weary old world, in 
which we dwell as pagans and enemies too long, and 
it would warm the heart to see how fast the vain di- 



356 LIBRARY NOTES. 

plomacy of statesmen, the impotence of armies and 
navies and lines of defense, would be superseded by 
this unarmed child." "We do not believe, or we for- 
get, that " the Holy Ghost came down, not in the 
shape of a vulture, but in the form of a dove." 

" ' Tell me, gentle traveler, who hast wandered 
through the world, and seen the sweetest roses blow, 
and brightest gliding rivers, of all thine eyes have 
seen, which is the fairest land ? ' ' Child, shall I tell 
thee where nature is most blest and fair ? It is where 
those we love abide. Though that space be small, 
ample is it above kingdoms ; though it be a desert, 
through it runs the river of paradise, and there are 
the enchanted bowers.' " 

" We ought," says the author of Ecce Homo, " to 
be just as tolerant of an imperfect creed as we are of 
an imperfect practice. Everything which can be 
urged in excuse for the latter may also be pleaded for 
the former. If the way to Christian action is beset 
by corrupt habits and misleading passions, the path 
to Christian truth is overgrown with prejudices, and 
strewn with fallen theories and rotting systems which 
hide it from our view. It is quite as hard to think 
rightly as to act rightly, or even to feel rightly. And 
as all allow that an error is a less culpable thing than 
a crime or a vicious passion, it is monstrous that it 
should be more severely punished ; it is monstrous 
that Christ, who was called the friend of publicans 
and sinners, should be represented as the pitiless en- 
emy of bewildered seekers of truth. How could men 
have been guilty of such an inconsistency ? By speak- 
ing of what they do not imderstand. Men in gen- 



RELIGION. 357 

eral do not understand or appreciate tlie difficulty of 
findino: truth. All men must act. and therefore all 
men learn in some degree how difficult it is to act 
rightly. The consequence is that all men can make 
excuse for those who fail to act rightly. But all men 
are not compelled to make an independent search for 
truth, and those who voluntarily undertake to do so 
are always few. To the world at large it seems quite 
eas}^ to find truth, and inexcusable to miss it. And 
no wonder ! For by finding truth they mean only 
learning by rote the maxims current among them." 
" Maxims and first principles," says Pascal, " are sub- 
ject to revolutions ; and we are to go to chronology 
for the epochas of right and wrong. A very humor- 
some justice this, which is bounded by a river or a 
mountain : orthodoxy on one side of the Pyrenees 
may be heresy on the other." " Let there," begs the 
Spanish President Castelar, " be no more accursed 
races on the earth. Let every one act according to 
his conscience, and communicate freely with his God. 
Let thought be only corrected by the contradiction of 
thought. Let error be an infirmity, and not a crime. 
Let us agree in acknowledging that opinions some- 
times take possession of our understandings quite inde- 
pendent of our will or desire. Let us be so just as to 
be enabled to see even to what degree each race has 
contributed to the universal education of humanity." 
"The truth," said Goethe, " must be repeated over 
and over again, because error is repeatedly preached 
among us, not only by individuals, but by the masses. 
In periodicals and cyclopedias, in schools and univer- 
sities, everywhere, in fact, error prevails, and is quite 



358 LIBRARY NOTES. 

easy in the feeling that it has quite a majority on its 
side." " Public opinion, of which we hear so much," 
said a writer in Blackwood, long ago, " is never any- 
thing else than the reecho of the thought of a few 
I great men half a century before. It takes that time 
i for ideas to flow down from the elevated to the infe- 
I rior level. The great never adopt, they only originate. 
Their chief efforts are always made in opposition to 
the prevailing opinions by which they are surrounded. 
Thence it is that a powerful mind is always uneasy 
when it is not in the minority on any subject which 
excites general attention." " If you discover a truth," 
says an unknown author, " you are persecuted by an 
infinite number of people who gain their living from 
the error you oppose, saying that this error itself is 
the truth, and that the greatest error is that which 
tends to destroy it." " There arose no small stir " at 
Ephesus on account of Paul's preaching. " For a 
certain man named Demetrius, a silversmith, which 
made silver shrines for Diana, brought no small gain 
unto the craftsmen ; whom he called together with the 
workmen of like occupation, and said, Sirs, ye know 
that by this craft we have our wealth : moreover, ye 
see and hear, that not alone at Ephesus, but almost 
throughout all Asia, this Paul hath persuaded and 
turned away much people, saying that they be no 
gods which are made with hands. So that not only 
this our craft is in danger to be set at nought ; but 
also that the temple of the great goddess Diana should 
be despised, and her magnificence should be destroyed, 
whom all Asia and the world worshipeth. And when 
they heard these sayings, they were full of wrath, and 
cried out, saying, Great is Diana of the Ephesians." 



RELIGION. 359 

" Thomas Aikenhead, a student of eighteen, was 
hanged at Edmburgh, in 1697, for having uttered," 
says Macaulay, in his History, " free opinions about 
the trinity and some of the books of the Bible. His 
offense was construed as blasphemy under an old 
Scotch statute, which was strained for the purpose of 
convicting him. After his sentence he recanted, and 
begged a short respite to make his peace with God. 
This the privy council declined to grant, unless the 
Edinburgh clergy would intercede for him ; but so 
far were they from seconding his petition, that they 
actually demanded that his execution should not be 
delayed." " Imagine, if you can," says Froude, in 
one of his essays, " a person being now put to death 
for a speculative theological opinion. You feel at 
once that, in the most bigoted country in the world, 
such a thing has become impossible ; and the impossi- 
bility is the measure of the alteration which we have 
all undergone. The formulas remain as they were, 
on either side, — the very same formulas which were 
once supposed to require these detestable murders. 
But we have learned to know each other better. 
The cords which bind together the brotherhood of 
mankind are woven of a thousand strands. We do 
not any more fly apart or become enemies because, 
here and there, in one strand out of so many, there 
are still unsound places." 

" There is a violent zeal," says Fenelon, " that we 
must correct ; it thinks it can change the whole world, 
it would reform everything, it would subject every 
one to its laws. The orio-in of this zeal is diss^raceful. 
The defects of our neighbor interfere with our own ; 



360 LIBRARY NOTES. 

our vanity is wounded by that of another ; our own 
haughtiness finds our neighbor's ridiculous and insup- 
portable ; our restlessness is rebuked by the sluggish- 
ness and indolence of this person ; our gloom is dis- 
turbed by the gayety and frivolities of that person, 
and our heedlessness by the shrewdness and address of 
another. If we were faultless, we should not be so 
much annoyed by the defects of those with whom we 
associate. If we were to acknowledge honestly that 
we have not virtue enough to bear patiently with our 
neighbors' weaknesses, we should show our own im- 
perfection, and this alarms our vanity. We therefore 
make our weakness pass for strength, elevate it to a 
virtue and call it zeal ; an imaginary and often hypo- 
critical zeal. For is it not surprising to see how tran- 
quil we are about the errors of others when they do 
not trouble us, and how soon this wonderful zeal kin- 
dles against those who excite our jealousy, or weary 
our patience ? " '' We reprove our friends' faults," 
said Wycherley, "more out of pride than love or 
charity ; not so much to correct them, as to make 
them believe we are ourselves without them." It was 
Dean Swift who said, " We have just enough of re- 
ligion to make us hate, but not enough to make us 
love, one another." " Your business," said Hunt, 
" is to preach love to your neighbor, to kick him to 
bits, and to thank God for the contradiction." " The 
falsehood that the tongue commits," said Landor, " is 
slight in comparison with what is conceived by the 
heart, and executed by the whole man, throughout 
life. If, professing love and charity to the human 
race at large, I quarrel day after day with my next 



RELIGION. 361 

neighbor ; if, professing that the rich ciin never see 
God, I spend in the kixuries of my household a 
talent monthly ; if, professing to place so much con- 
fidence in his word, that, in regard to wordly weal, 
I need take no care for to-morrow, I accumulate 
stores even beyond what would be necessary though 
I quite distrusted both his providence and his ve- 
racity ; if, professing that ' he who giveth to the 
poor lendeth to the Lord,' I question the Lord's 
security, and haggle with him about the amount 
of the loan ; if, professing that I am their stew- 
ard, I keep ninety-nine parts in the hundred as 
the emolument of my stewardship : how, when God 
hates liars, and punishes defrauders, shall I, and other 
such thieves and hypocrites, fare hereafter?" Li one 
of his chapters on the Study of Sociology, Herbert 
Spencer remarks that " it would clear up our ideas 
about many things, if we distinctly recognized the 
truth that we have two religions." These two relig- 
ions Mr. Spencer designates as the " religion of am- 
ity " and the '> religion of enmity." " Of course," 
he says, " I don't mean that these are both called 
religions. Here I am not speaking of names ; I am 
speaking simply of things. Nowadays men do not 
pay the same nominal homage to the religion of en- 
mity that they do to the religion of amity — the 
religion of amity occupies the place of honor. But 
the real homage is paid in large measure, if not in the 
larger measure, to the religion of enmity. The re- 
ligion of enmity nearly all men actually believe. The 
religion of amity most of them merely believe they 
believe." " The Church of Rome," said F. W. Rob- 



362 LIBRARY NOTES. 

ertson, in his sermon on The Tongue, "hurls her 
thunders against Protestants of every denomination; 
the Calvinist scarcely recognizes the Arminian as a 
Christian ; he who considers himself as the true An- 
glican excludes from the church of Christ all but the 
adherents of his own orthodoxy ; every minister and 
congregation has its small circle, beyond which all are 
heretics ; nay, even among that sect which is most lax 
as to the dogmatic forms of truth, we find the Uni- 
tarian of the old schoordenouncing the spiritualism of 
the new and rising school. Sisters of Charity refuse 
to permit an act of charity to be done by a Samari- 
tan ; ministers of the gospel fling the thunder-bolts of 
the Lord ; ignorant hearers catch and exaggerate the 
spirit ; boys, girls, and women shudder as one goes 
by, perhaps .more holy than themselves, who adores 
the same God, believes in the same Redeemer, strug- 
gles in the same hf e-battle — and all this because they 
have been taught to look upon him as an enemy of 
God." " Particular churches and sects," says Sir 
Thomas Browne, '' usurp the gates of heaven, and 
turn the keys against each other ; and thus we go to 
heaven against each others' wills, conceits, and opin- 
ions." " The church of the future," in the opinion of 
Father Hyacinthe, " will know nothing of such di- 
visions, such discordances, and she will uphold the 
freedom of theologies and the diversity of rites in the 
unity of one faith and of one worship." " As soon," 
said Goethe, " as the pure doctrine and love of Christ 
are comprehended in their true nature, and have be- 
come a vital principle, we shall feel ourselves as human 
beings, great and free, and not attach especial impor- 



RELIGION. 363 

tance to a degree more or less in the outward forms 
of religion : besides, we shall all gradually advance 
from a Christianity of words and faith to a Chris- 
tianity of feeling and action." " Could we," said 
Dean Young, " but once descend from our high pre- 
tenses of religion to the humility that only makes 
men religious, could we but once prefer Christianity 
itself before the several factions that bear its name, 
our differences would sink of themselves ; and it 
would appear to us that there is more religion in not 
contending than there is in the matter we contend 
about." " Do you remember," asks the author of 
The Eclipse of Faith, " the passage in Woodstock, 
in which our old favorite represents the Episcopalian 
Rochecliffe and the Presbyterian Holdenough meet- 
ing unexpectedly in prison, after many years of sepa- 
ration, during which one had thought the other dead ? 
How sincerely glad they were, and how pleasantly 
they talked ; when, lo ! an unhappy reference to ' the 
bishopric of Titus' gradually abated the fervor of 
their charity, and inflamed that of their zeal, even 
till they at last separated in mutual dudgeon, and sat 
glowering at each other in their distant corners with 
looks in which the ' Episcopalian ' and ' Presbyterian ' 
were much more evident than the ' Christian : ' and 
so they persevered till the sudden summons to them 
and their fellow-prisoners, to prepare for instant exe- 
cution, dissolved as with a charm the anger they had 
felt, and ' Forgive me, O my brother,' and ' I have 
sinned against thee, my brother,' broke from their 
lips as they took what they thought would be a last 
farewell." " I sometimes," says Froude, " in impa- 



364 LIBRARY NOTES. 

tient moments, wish the laity would treat their con- 
troversial divines as two gentlemen once treated their 
seconds, when they found themselves forced into a 
duel without knowing what they were quarreling 
about. As the principals were being led up to their 
places, one of them whispered to the other, ' If you 
will shoot your second, I will shoot mine.' " 

'' Man," says Harrington, in his Political Aphor- 
isms, " may rather be defined a religious than a ra- 
tional creature, in regard that in other creatures there 
may be something of reason, but there is nothing of 
religion." " If you travel through the world well," 
says Plutarch, "you may find cities without walls, 
without literature, without kings, moneyless, and such 
as desire no coin ; which know not what theatres or 
public halls of bodily exercise mean ; but never was 
there, nor ever shall there be, any one city seen with- 
out temple, church or chapel ; without some god or 
other ; which usetli no prayers nor oaths, no prophe- 
cies and divinations, no sacrifices, either to obtain 
good blessings or to avert heavy curses and calamities. 
Nay, methinks a man should sooner find a city built 
in the air, without any plot of ground whereon it is 
seated, than that any commonwealth altogether void 
of religion and the opinion of the gods should either 
be first established, or afterwards preserved and main- 
tained in that estate. This is that containeth and 
holdeth together all human society ; this is the foun- 
dation, prop, and stay of all." " How striking a proof 
is it," says a writer on The Religions of India, " of the 
strength of the adoring principle in human nature — 
what an illustration of mankind's sense of dependence 



RELIGION. 365 

upon an unseen Supreme — that the grandest works 
which the nations have reared are those connected 
with rehgion ! Were a spirit from some distant world 
to look down upon the surface of our planet as it 
spins round in the solar rays, his eye would be 
most attracted, as the morning light passed onward, 
hj the glittering and painted pagodas of China, Bor- 
neo, and Japan; the richly ornamented temples and 
stupendous rock shrines of India ; the dome-topped 
mosques and tall, slender minarets of Western Asia ; 
the pyramids and vast temples of Egypt, with their 
mile-long avenues of gigantic statues and sphinxes ; 
the graceful shrines of classic Greece ; the basilicas 
of Rome and Byzantium ; the semi-Oriental church- 
domes of Moscow; the Gothic cathedrals of West- 
ern Europe : and as the day closed, the light would 
fall dimly upon the ruins of the grand sun-temples 
of Mexico and Peru, where, in the infancy of reason 
and humanity, human sacrifices were offered up, as if 
the All-Father were pleased with the agony of his 
creatures ! " 

" Moral rules," says Matthew Arnold, in his Essay 
on Marcus Aurelius, " apprehended as ideas first, and 
then rigorously followed as laws, are and must be for 
the sage only. The mass of mankind have neither 
force of intellect enough to apprehend them clearly 
as ideas, nor force of character enough to follow them 
strictly as laws. The mass of mankind can be carried 
along a course full of hardships for the natural man, 
can be borne over the thousand impediments of the 
narrow way, only by the tide of a joyful and bound- 
ing emotion. It is impossible to rise from reading 



366 LIBRARY NOTES. 

Epictetus or Marcus Aurelius without a sense of con- 
straint and melancholy, without feeling that the 
burden laid upon man is well-nigh greater than he 
can bear. Honor to the sages who have felt this, 
and yet have borne it ! . . . . For the ordinary man, 
this sense of labor and sorrow constitutes an absolute 
disqualification ; it paralyzes him ; under the weight 
of it he cannot make way towards the goal at all. 
The paramount virtue of religion is that it has lighted 
up morality ; that it has supplied the emotion and 
inspiration needful for carrying the sage along the 
narrow way perfectly, for carrying the ordinary man 
along it at all. Even the religions with most dross in 
them have had something of this virtue ; but the 
Christian rehgion manifests it with unexampled 
splendor." The Duke de Chaulnes once said to Dr. 
Johnson that " every religion had a certain degree of 
morality in it." " Ay, my lord," answered he, " but 
the Christian religion alone puts it on its proper basis." 
" It is Christianity alone," said Max Miiller, " which, 
as the religion of humanity, as the religion of no caste, 
of no chosen people, has taught us to respect the his- 
tory of humanity as a whole, to discover the traces of 
a divine wisdom and love in the government of all the 
races of mankind, and to recognize, if possible, even 
in the lowest and crudest forms of religious belief, 
not the work of demoniacal agencies, but something 
that indicates a divine guidance, something that 
makes us perceive, with St. Peter, ' that God is no 
respecter of persons, but that in every nation he that 
feareth Him and worketh righteousness is accepted 
with Him.' " " The turning-point," remarks Frances 



RELIGION. 367 

Power Cobbe, " between the old world and the new 
was the beginning of the Christian movement. The 
action upon human nature, which started on its new 
course, was the teaching and example of Christ. 
Christ was he who opened the age of endless prog- 
ress. The old world grew from without, and was 
outwardly symmetric. The new one grows from 
within, and is not symmetric, nor ever will be ; bear- 
ing in its heart the germ of an everlasting, un- 
resting progress. The old world built its temples, 
hewed its statues, framed its philosophies, and wrote 
its glorious epics and dramas, so that nothing might 
evermore be added to them. The new world made 
its art, its philosophy, its poetry, all imperfect, yet 
instinct with a living spirit beyond the old. To the 
Parthenon not a stone could be added from the hour 
of its completion. To Milan and Cologne altar and 
chapel, statue and spire, will be added through the 
ages. Christ was not merely a moral reformer, in- 
culcating pure ethics ; not merely a religious reformer, 
clearing away old theological errors and teaching 
higher ideas of God. These things He was ; but He 
might, for all we can tell, have been them both as 
fully, and yet have failed to be what He has actually 
been to our race. He might have taught the world 
better ethics and better theology, and yet have failed 
to infuse into it that new tide which has ever since 
coursed through its arteries and penetrated i< < m'.iut- 
est veins. What Christ has really done is beyond 
the kingdom of the intellect and its theologies ; nay, 
even beyond the kingdom of the conscience and its 
recognition of duty. His work has been in that of 



368 LIBRARY NOTES. 

the heart. He has transformed the law into the gos- 
pel. He has changed the bondage of the alien for 
the liberty of the sons of God. He has glorified 
virtue into holiness, religion into piety, and duty 
into love." His was " a religion," says Jeremy Tay- 
lor, " that taught men to be meek and humble, apt 
to receive injuries, but unapt to do any ; a religion 
that gave countenance to the poor and pitiful, in a 
time when riches were adored, and ambition and 
pleasure had possessed the heart of all mankind ; a 
religion that would change the face of things and the 
hearts of men, and break vile habits into gentleness 
and counsel." " Great and multiform," says Lecky, 
in his History of European Morals, — summing up 
some of the results of Christianity, — " great and 
multiform have been the influences of Christian 
philanthropy. The high conception that has been 
formed of the sanctity of human life, the protection 
of infancy, the elevation and final emancipation of 
the slave classes, the suppression of barbarous games, 
the creation of a vast and multifarious organization 
of charity, and the education of the imagination by 
the Christian type, constituted together a movement 
of philanthropy which has never been paralleled or 
approached in the pagan world." 

" If there be any good in thee," says the author of 
the Imitation, " believe that there is much more in 
others, that so thou mayest preserve humility. It 
hurteth thee not to submit to all men ; but it hurteth 
thee most of all to prefer thyself even to one." " Be 
assured," said Dean Young, " there can be but little 
honesty without thinking as well as possible of oth- 



RELIGION. 369 

ers ; and there can be no safety without thinking 
bumbly and distrustfully of ourselves." " The char- 
acter of a wise man consists in three things : to do 
himself what he tells others to do ; to act on no oc- 
casion contrary to justice ; and to bear with the 
weaknesses of those around him. Treat inferiors as 
if you might one day be in the hands of a master." 
" I recollect," says Saadi, " the verse which the ele- 
phant-driver rehearsed on the banks of the river Nile : 
' If you are ignorant of the state of the ant under 
your foot, know that it resembles your own con- 
dition under the foot of the elephant.' " The stable 
of Confucius being burned down, when he was at 
court, on his return he said, " Has any man been 
hurt? " He did not ask about the horses. Fenelon 
had a habit of bringing into his palace the wretched 
inhabitants of the country, whom the war had driven 
from their homes, and taking care of them, and feed- 
ing them at his own table. Seeing one day that one 
of these peasants ate nothing, he asked him the rea- 
son of his abstinence. "Alas! my lord," said the 
poor man, " in making my escape from my cottage, I 
had not time to bring off my cow, which was the sup- 
port of my family. The enemy will drive her away, 
and I shall never find another so good." Fenelon, 
availing himself of his privilege of safe-conduct, im- 
mediately set out, accompanied by a servant, and 
drove the cow back himself to the peasant. A liter- 
ary man, whose library was destroyed by fire, has 
been deservedly admired for saying, " I should have 
profited but little by my books, if they had not taught 
me how to bear the loss of them." The remark of 

24 



370 LIBRARY NOTES. 

Fenelon, who lost his in a similar way, is still more 
simple and touching. " I would much rather they 
were burnt than the cottage of a poor peasant." Lord 
Peterborough said of Fenelon, "He was a delicious 
creature. I was obliged to get away from him, or he 
would have made me pious." The influence of such 
a character brings to mind a passage from Saadi. 
" One day," he says, " as I was in the bath, a friend 
of mine put into my hand a piece of scented clay. I 
took it, and said to it, ' Art thou of heaven or earth ? 
for I am charmed with thy delightful scent.' It an- 
swered, ' I was a despicable piece of clay ; but I was 
some time in company of the rose : the sweet quality 
of my companion was communicated to me ; other- 
wise I should have remained only what I appear to 
be, a bit of earth.' " 

" If thou canst not make thyself such an one as 
thou wouldst," quoting the Imitation of Christ, "how 
canst thou expect to have another in all things to thy 
liking ? We would willingly have others perfect, and 
yet we amend not our own faults. We would have 
others severely corrected, and will not be corrected 
ourselves. The large liberty of others displeaseth 
us ; and yet we will not have our own desires denied 
us. We will have others kept under by strict laws ; 
but in no sort will ourselves be restrained. And thus 
it appeareth how seldom we weigh our neighbor in 
the same balance with ourselves." Addison, in one 
of the papers of The Spectator, enlarges upon the cel- 
ebrated thought of Socrates, that if all the misfort- 
unes of mankind were cast into a public stock, in 
order to be equally distributed among the whole spe- 



RELIGION. 371 

cies, those who now think themselves the most un- 
happy would prefer the share they are already pos- 
sessed of before that which would fall to them by such 
a division — by imagining a proclamation made by 
Jupiter, that every mortal should bring in his griefs 
and calamities, and throw them in a heap. There 
was a large plain appointed for this purpose. He took 
his stand in the centre of it, and saw the whole hu- 
man species marching one after another, and tlirowing 
down their several loads, which immediately grew up 
into a prodigious mountain, that seemed to rise above 
the clouds. He observed one bringing in a bundle 
very carefully concealed under an old embroidered 
cloak, which, upon his throwing into the heap, he 
discovered to be poverty. Another, after a great deal 
of puffing, threw down his luggage, which, upon ex- 
amining, he found to be his wife. He saw multitudes 
of old women throw down their wrinkles, and several 
young ones strip themselves of their tawny skins. 
There were very great heaps of red noses, large lips, 
and rusty teeth, — in truth, he was surprised to see 
the greatest part of the mountain made up of bodily 
deformities. Observing one advancing towards the 
heap with a larger cargo than ordinary upon his back, 
he found upon his near approach that it was only a 
natural hump, which he disposed of with great joy of 
heart among the collection of human miseries. But 
what most surprised him of all was that there was 
not a single vice or folly thrown into the whole heap ; 
at which he was very much astonished, having con- 
cluded with himself that every one would take this 
opportunity of getting rid of his passions, prejudices, 
and frailties. 



372 LIBRARY NOTES. 

" Passions, prejudices, and frailties ! " " There is 
no man so good," says Montaigne, " who, were he to 
submit all his thoughts and actions to the laws, would 
not deserve hanging ten times in his life. [Talley- 
rand, when Rulliiere said he had been guilty of only 
one wickedness in his life, asked, "When w411 it 
end ? "] We are so far from being good men, accord- 
ing to the laws of God, that we cannot be so according 
to our 6wn ; human wisdom never yet arrived at the 
duty that it had itself prescribed ; and could it arrive 
there, it would still prescribe itself others beyond it, 
to which it would ever aspire and pretend ; so great 
an enemy of consistency is our human condition." 
Of prejudice it has been truly said by Basil Montagu, 
in a note to one of his publications, that " it has the 
singular ability of accommodating itself to all the 
possible varieties of the human mind. Some passions 
and vices are but thinly scattered among mankind, 
and find only here and there a fitness of reception. 
But prejudice, like the spider, makes everywhere its 
home. It has neither taste nor choice of place, and all 
that it requires is room. There is scarcely a situation, 
except fire and water, in which a spider will not live. 
So let the mind be as naked as the walls of an empty 
and forsaken tenement, gloomy as a dungeon, or orna- 
mented with the richest abilities of thinking ; let it be 
hot, cold, dark or light, lonely or inhabited, still prej- 
udice, if undisturbed, will fill it with cobwebs, and 
live, like the spider, where there seems nothing to live 
on. If the one prepares her food by poisoning it to 
her palate and her use, the other does the same ; and 
as several of our passions are strongly characterized 



RELIGION. 373 

by the animal world, prejudice may be denominated 
the spider of the mind." " We are all frail, but do 
thou esteem none more frail than thyself." " Those 
many that need pity," says Jeremy Taylor, " and 
those infinities of people that refuse to pity, are miser- 
able upon a several charge, but yet they almost make 
up all mankind." 

" The most important thing in life," says Pascal, 
" is the choice of a profession ; and yet this is a thing 
purely in the disposal of chance." But we take no 
account of the effect of occupation upon body and 
mind, holding all alike responsible for opinions and 
conduct. In an article in the Journal of Psycholog- 
ical Medicine on Baron Feuchtersleben's Principles 
of Medical Psychology, showing how the mind is in- 
fluenced by a mechanical calling, there is this remark- 
able sentence : " Rosch and Esquirol affirm from ob- 
servation that indigo-dyers become melancholy ; and 
those who dye scarlet, choleric." 

Shaftesbury, in his Characteristics, inquires, " What 
stranger pleasure is there with mankind, or what do 
they earlier learn or longer retain, than the love of 
hearing and relating things strange and incredible ? 
How wonderful a thing is the love of wondering, and 
of raising wonder ! 'T is the delight of children to 
hear tales they shiver at, and the vice of old age to 
abound in strange stories of times past. We come 
into the world wondering at everything ; and when 
our wonder about common things is over, we seek 
something new to wonder at. Our last scene is to 
tell wonders of our own, to all who will believe 'em. 
And, amidst all this, 't is well if truth comes off but 



374 LIBRARY NOTES. 

moderately tainted." " Curiosity," says Pascal, " is 
little better than mere yanity. For the most part, 
we desire to know things purely that we may talk of 
them. Few would undertake so dangerous voyages 
and travels for the bare pleasure of entertaining their 
sight, if they were bound to secresy at their return, 
or forever cloistered from conversation." 

Some persons need much time to know a little 
truth ; others seem to know, at a glance, all that they 
can. Cumberland said Bubb Doddington was in 
nothing more remarkable than in ready perspicuity 
and discernment of a subject thrown before him on 
a sudden. " Take his first thoughts then, and he 
would charm you ; give him time to ponder and re- 
fine, you would perceive the spirit of his sentiments 
and the vigor of his genius evaporate by the process, 
for though his first view of the question would be a 
wide one, and clear withal, when he came to exercise 
the subtlety of his disquisitional powers upon it, he 
would so ingeniously dissect and break it into fractions, 
that as an object, when looked upon too intently for 
a length of time, grows misty and confused, so would 
the question under his discussion when the humor 
took him to be hypercritical." Coleridge said Home 
Tooke " had that clearness which is founded on shal- 
lowness. He doubted nothing, and therefore gave 
you all that he himself knew, or meant, with great 
completeness." Thucydides said of Themistocles that 
" he had the best judgment in actual circumstances, 
and he formed his judgment with the least delibera- 
tion." Quick or deliberate, shallow or profound, all 
are apt to assume to know all, when they may be 



RELIGION. 375 

little wiser, in truth, than ^sop's two travelers, who 
had visited Arabia, and were conversing together 
about the chameleon. " A very singular animal," 
said one, "I never saw one at all like it in ray life. 
It has the head of a fish, its body is as thin as that 
of a lizard, its pace is slow, its color blue." " Stop 
there," said the other, " you are quite mistaken, the 
animal is green ; I saw it with my two eyes." " I 
saw it as well as you," cried the first, '' and I am cer- 
tain that it is blue." " I am positive that it is green." 
" And I that it is blue." The travelers were getting 
very angry with each other, and were about to settle 
the disputed point by blows, when happily a third 
person arrived. " Well, gentlemen, what is the mat- 
ter here ? Calm yourselves, I pray you." " Will 
you be the judge of our quarrel ? " " Yes ; what is 
it ? " " This person maintains that the chameleon is 
green, while I say that it is blue." " My dear sirs, 
you are both in the wrong ; the animal is neither 
one nor the other — it is black." " Black ! you must 
be jesting ! " " Not at all, I assure you ; I ha,ve one 
with me in a box, and you shall judge for yourselves." 
The box was produced and opened, when, to the sur- 
prise of all three, the animal was as yellow as gold ! 
In one of the Hindoo books we are told that " in a 
certain country there existed a village of the blind 
men. These men had heard that there was an amaz- 
ing animal called the elephant, but they knew not 
how to form an idea of his shape. One day an ele- 
phant happened to pass through the place ; the vil- 
lagers crowded to the spot where this animal was 
standing. One of them got hold of his trunk, another 



376 LIBRARY NOTES. 

seized his ear, another his tail, another one of his legs, 
etc. After thus trying to gratify their curiosity, they 
returned into the village, and, sitting down together, 
they began to give their ideas of what the elephant 
was like; the man who had seized his trunk said 
he thought the elephant was like the body of the 
plantain-tree ; the man who had felt his ear said he 
thought he was like the fan with which the Hindoos 
clean the rice ; the man who had felt his tail said he 
thought he must be like a snake, and the man who 
had seized his leg thought he must be like a pillar. 
An old blind man of some judgment was present, who 
was greatly perplexed how to reconcile these jarring 
notions respecting the form of the elephant, but he at 
length said, ' You have all been to examine this ani- 
mal, it is true, and what you report cannot be false ; 
I suppose, therefore, that that which was like the 
plantain-tree must be his trunk ; that which was like 
a fan must be his ear ; that which was like a snake 
must be his tail, and that which was like a pillar 
must be his body/ " Once on a time a pastor of a 
village church adopted a plan to interest the members 
of his flock in the study of the Bible. It was this : 
" At the Wednesday evening meeting he would an- 
nounce the topic to be discussed on the ensuing week, 
thus giving a week for preparation. One evening the 
subject was St. Paul. After the preliminary devo- 
tional exercises, the pastor called upon one of the 
deacons to ' speak to the question.' He immediately 
arose, and began to describe the personal appearance 
of the great apostle to the Gentiles. He said St. 
Paul was a tall, rather spare man, with black hair 



RELIGION. 377 

and eyes, dark complexion, bilious temperament, etc. 
His picture of Paul was a faithful portrait of himself. 
He sat down, and another prominent member arose 
and said, ' I think the brother preceding me has read 
the Scriptures to little purpose if his description of 
St. Paul is a sample of his Bible knowledge. St. 
Paul was, as I understand it, a rather short, thick-set 
man, with sandy hair, gray eyes, florid complexion, 
and a nervous, sanguine temperament,' giving, like 
his predecessor, an accurate picture of himself. He 
was followed by another who had a keen sense of the 
ludicrous, and who was withal an inveterate stam- 
merer. He said, ' My bro-bro-brethren, I have never 
fo-found in my Bi-ble much about the p-per-personal 
ap-pe-pearance of St. P-p-paul. But one thing is 
clearly established, and tha-that is, St. P-p-paul had 
an imp-p-pediment in his speech.' " 

" Having lived long," said Dr. Franklin, '' I have 
experienced many instances of being obliged, by better 
information, or fuller consideration, to change opinions 
even on important subjects, which I once thought 
right, but I found to be otherwise. It is, therefore, that 
the older I grow, the more apt I am to doubt my own 
judgment, and to pay more respect to the judgment 
of others. Most men, indeed, as well as most sects in 
religion, think themselves in possession of all truth, 
and that whenever others differ from them, it is so 
far error. Steele, a Protestant, in a dedication tells 
the pope that ' the only difference between our two 
churches, in their opinions of the certainty of their 
doctrines is, the Romish Church is infallible, and the 
Church of England never in the wrong.' But, though 



378 LIBKARY NOTES. 

many private persons think almost as highly of their 
own infallibility as that of their sect, few express it 
so naturally as a certain French lady who, in a little 
dispute with her sister, said, ' I don't know how it 
happens, sister, but I meet with nobody but myself 
that is always in the right.' " '* I could never," says 
Sir Thomas Browne, '' divide myself from any man 
upon the difference of an opinion, or be angry with 
his judgment for not agreeing with me in that from 
which, perhaps, within a few days, I should dissent 
f myself." " Whoever shall call to memory how many 
[ and many times he has been mistaken in his own 
.; judgment," says the great French essayist, " is he not 
j a great fool if he does not ever after distrust it ? " 
^ " Beware," said John Wesley, " of forming a hasty 
judgment. There are secrets which few but God are 
acquainted with. Some years since I told a gentle- 
man, ' Sir, I am afraid you are covetous.' He asked 
me, ' What is the reason of your fears ? ' I answered, 
' A year ago, when I made a collection for the expense 
of repairing the Foundry, you subscribed five guineas. 
At the subscription made this year you subscribed 
only half a guinea.' He made no reply ; but after a 
time asked, ' Pray, sir, answer me a question. Why 
do you live upon potatoes ? ' (I did so between three 
and four years.) I replied, ' It has much conduced 
to my health.' He answered, ' I believe it has. But 
did you not do it likewise to save money ? ' I said, 
' I did, for what I save from my own meat will 
feed another that else would have none.' ' But, sir,' 
said he, ' if this be your motive, you may save much 
more. I know a man that goes to the market at the 



RELIGION. 379 

beginning of each week. There he buys a penny- 
worth of parsnips, which he boils in a large quan- 
tity of water. The parsnips serve him for food, 
and the water for drink, the ensuing week, so his 
meat and drink together cost him only a penny a 
week.' This he constantly did, though he had then 
two hundred pounds a year, to pay the debts which he 
had contracted before he knew God ! And this was 
he I had set down for a covetous man." " We shall 
have two wonders in heaven," said the wise and 
gentle Tillotson ; " the one, how many come to be 
absent whom we expected to find there ; the other, 
how many are there whom we had no hope of meet- 
mg. 

It would seem that, as things are, there is nothing 
so natural as intolerance ; and it is not to be won- 
dered at that the language to express toleration should 
be of modern invention. Coleridge was of opinion 
" that toleration was impossible till indifference made 
it worthless." Dr. King had a different view ; he 
said, " The opinion of any one in this world, except 
the wise and good, who do not aspire to be even tol- 
erant, — who are too modest to be tolerant, since toler- 
ation implies superiority, — is of little consequence." 
Hunt said of Lamb that " he had felt, thought, and 
suffered so much, that he literally had intolerance for 
nothing." Palgrave, in his Travels through Central 
and Eastern Arabia, relates of Abd-el-Lateef, a Wa- 
habee, that one day seeing a corpulent Hindoo, he 
exclaimed, " What a log for hell-fire ! " This fol- 
lower of Mahomet had not only the intolerance, but 
the conceit of super-excellence that the poor sectarian 



380 LIBRARY NOTES. 

followers of Christ too often "have. " When he was 
preaching one day to the people of Riad, he recounted 
the tradition according to which Mahomet declared 
that his followers should divide into seventy-three 
sects, and that seventy-two were destined to hell-fire, 
and only one to paradise. ' And what, O messenger 
of God, are the signs of that happy sect to which 
is insured the exclusive possession of paradise ? ' 
Whereto Mahomet had replied, ' It is those who shall 
be in all conformable to myself and my companions.' 
' And that,' added Abd-el-Lateef, lowering his voice 
to the deep tone of conviction, ' that, by the mercy of 
God, are we, the people of Riad.' " 

Upon the subject of toleration and charity, read a 
part of the remarkable dialogue from Arthur Helps' 
Friends in Council : — 

DuNSFORD. — It is hard to be tolerant of intolerant 
people ; to see how natural their intolerance is, and 
in fact thoroughly to comprehend it and feel for it. 
This is the last stage of tolerance, which few men, I 
suppose, in this world attain. 

MiDHURST. — Tolerance appears to me an un- 
worked mine 

MiLVERTON. — There is one great difficulty to be 
surmounted ; and that is, how to make hard, clear 
righteous men, who have not sinned much, have not 
suffered much, are not afflicted by strong passions, who 
have not many ties in the world, and who have been 
easily prosperous, — how to make such men tolerant. 
Think of this for a moment. For a man who has 
been rigidly good to be supremely tolerant would re- 
quire an amount of insight which seems to belong 



RELIGION. 381 

only to the greatest genius. I have often fancied that 
the main scheme of the world is to create tenderness 
in man ; and I have a notion that the outer world 
would change if man were to acquire more of this 
tenderness. You see at present he is obliged to be 
kept down by urgent wants of all kinds, or he would 
otherwise have more time and thought to devote to 
cruelty and discord. If he could live in a better world, 
I mean in a world where nature was more propitious, 
I believe he would have such a world. And in some 
mysterious way, I suspect that nature is constrained 
to adapt herself to the main impress of the character 
of the average beings in the world. 

Ellesmere. — These are very extraordinary 
thoughts. 

DuNSFORD. — They are not far from Christianity. 

MiLVERTON. — You must admit, Ellesmere, that 
Christianity has never been tried. I do not ask you 
to canvass doctrinal and controversial matters. But 
take the leading precepts ; read the Sermon on the 
Mount, and see if it is the least like the doctrines of 
modern life. 

DuNSFORD. — I cannot help thinking, when you 
are all talking of tolerance, why you do not use the 
better word, of which we hear something in Script- 
ure, — charity. 

MiLYERTON. — If I were a clergyman, there is 
much that I should dislike to have to say (being a 
man of very dubious mind) ; there is much also that I 
should dislike to have to read ; but I should feel that 
it was a great day for me when I had to read out that 
short but most abounding chapter from St. Paul on 



382 LIBRARY NOTES. 

charity. The more you study that chapter, the more 
profound you find it. The way that the apostle be- 
gins is most remarkable ; and I doubt if it has been 
often duly considered. We think much of knowledge 
in our own times ; but consider what the early Chris- 
tian must have thought of one who possessed the gift 
of tongues or the gift of prophecy. Think also what 
the early Christian must have thought of the man 
who possessed "all faith." Then listen to St. Paul's 
summing up of these great gifts in comparison with 
charity. Dunsford, will you give us the words ? You 
remember them, I dare say. 

Dunsford. — (1 Cor. ch. xiii.) '' Though I speak 
with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not 
charity ; I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling 
cymbal. 

" And though I have the gift of prophecy, and un- 
derstand all mysteries, and all knowledge ; and though 
I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, 
and have not charity, I am nothing." 

MiLVERTON. — You will let me proceed, I know, if 
it is only to hear more from Dunsford of that chapter. 
I have said that the early Christian would have 
thought much of the man who possessed the gift of 
tongues, of prophecy, of faith. But how he must 
have venerated the rich man who entered into his 
little community, and gave up all his goods to the 
poor ! Again, how the early Christian must have re- 
garded with longing admiration the first martyrs for 
his creed ! Then hear what St. Paul says of this out- 
ward charity, and of this martyrdom, when compared 
with this infinitely more difficult charity of the soul 



RELIGION. 383 

and martyrdom of the temper. Dunsford will pro- 
ceed with the chapter. 

Dunsford. — " And though I bestow all my goods 
to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be 
burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing." 

MiLVERTON. — Pray go on, Dunsford. 

Dunsford. — " Charity suffereth long, and is 
kind ; charity envieth not ; charity vaunteth not it- 
self, is not puffed up, 

" Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her 
own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil ; 

" Rejoice til not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the 
truth ; 

" Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth 
all things, endureth all things. Charity never fail- 
eth : but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail ; 
whether there be tongues, they shall cease ; whether 
there be knowledge, it shall vanish away." 

MiLVERTON. — That is surely one of the most 
beautiful things that has ever been written by man. 
It does not do to talk much after it. 

Channing closes his Essay upon the Means of Pro- 
moting Christianity with this remarkable passage : 
" If, in this age of societies, we should think it wise 
to recommend another institution for the propagation 
of Christianity, it would be one the members of which 
should be pledged to assist and animate one another 
in living according to the Sermon on the Mount 
How far such a measure would be effectual we vent- 
ure not to predict ; but of one thing we are sure, 
that, should it prosper, it would do more for spread- 
ing the gospel than all other associations whicli are 
now receiving the patronage of the Christian world." 



384 LIBRARY NOTES. 

At the White House, " on an occasion I shall never 
forget," said Mr. Deming, " the conversation turned 
upon religious subjects, and Lincoln made this im- 
pressive remark : ' I have never united myself to 
any church, because I have found difficulty in giving 
my assent, without mental reservation, to the long, 
complicated statements of Christian doctrine which 
characterize their articles of belief and confessions 
of faith. When any church will inscribe over its 
altar, as its sole qualification for membership,' he con- 
tinued, 'the Saviour's condensed statement of the 
substance of both law and gospel. Thou shalt love 
the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy 
soul, and with all thy mind, and thy neighbor as thy- 
self, that church will I join with all my heart and all 
my soul.' " 

" You may remember," says Farrar, in his Silence 
and Voices of God, " how, in the old legend, St. 
Brendan, in his northward voyage, saw a man sitting 
upon an iceberg, and with horror recognized him as 
the traitor Judas Iscariot ; and the traitor told him 
how, at Christmas time, amid the drench of the burn- 
ing lake, an angel had touched his arm, and bidden 
him for one hour to cool his agony on an iceberg in 
the Arctic sea ; and when he asked the cause of this 
mercy, bade him recognize in him a leper to whom in 
Joppa streets he had given a cloak to shelter him from 
the wind ; and how for that one kind deed this respite 
was allotted him. Let us reject the ghastly side of 
the legend, and accept its truth. Yes, charity — love 
to God as shown in love to man — is better than all 
burnt- offering and sacrifice." '' In thy face," said 



RELIGION. 385 

the dying Bunsen to the wife of his heart, bending 
over him, " in thy face have I seen the Eternal." 

When Abraham, according to another old legend, 
sat at his tent door, as was his custom, waiting 
to entertain strangers, he espied coming towards 
him an old man, stooping and leaning on his staff, 
weary with age and travail, who was a hundred years 
of age. He received him kindly, washed his feet, 
provided supper, caused him to sit down ; but observ- 
ing that the old man eat, and prayed not, nor begged 
for a blessing on his meat, he asked him why he did 
not worship the God of heaven. The old man told 
him that he worshiped the fire only, and acknowl- 
edged no other God. At which answer Abraham 
grew so zealously angry that he thrust the old man 
out of his tent, and exposed him to all the evils of 
the night and an unguarded condition. When the 
old man was gone, God called to Abraham, and 
asked him where the stranger was. He replied, " I 
thrust him away because he did not worship Thee." 
God answered him, " I have suffered him these hun- 
dred years, although he dishonored me ; and couldst 
not thou endure him one night ? " 

" Ah ! poor things that we are. We are all sore 
with many bruises and wounds. The marvel is that 
our own tenderness does not make us tender to all 
others." 

" He shall be immortal who liveth till he be stoned 
by one without fault." 

25 



INDEX. 



Abd-el-Lateef, anecdotes of, re- 
lated by Palgrave, 379. 

Addison, on living and dressing ac- 
cording to the rules of common 
sense, 78; his care in composition, 
141 ; reputed portrait of, 197 ; his 
belief in ghosts, 246; his mar- 
riage, 249 ; enlarges on a thought 
of Socrates, 370. 

Advice, on asking and giving, 116. 

^sop, his fable of the travelers and 
the chameleon, 375. 

Agassiz, had no time to make money, 
149. 

Aikenhead, hanged for free religious 
opinions, 359. 

Alfred, King of Denmark, story of, 
173. 

Alger, public opinion the atmosphere 
of society, 22; most men live 
blindly, 40 ; ruins, and what they 
symbolize, 222; on the blindness 
of Homer, Milton, Galileo, and 
Handel, 231 ; on the happiness of 
solitude, 338; his account of the 
Hermit of Grub Street, 339; the 
forest of statues on the roof of the 
Milan cathedral, 350; the schol- 
ar's pantheon at the top of his 
mind, 350. 

Anaxagoras, a request made by, 
221 ; whom he believed to be most 
happy, 342. 

Anecdote of a Calvinistic divine, 
56; of a country clergyman. 56; 
of a singer and his wife, in Leip- 
sic, 314 ; of a hypochondriacal 
comedian, 320. 

Angelo, Michel, acknowledges his 
ignorance, 45 ; on reforming man- 
kind, 103; anecdote of, 175; gem 
once worn on the finger of, 185; 
and the Reformation, 256; the 
statues of, 301 ; and Bramante, 
302; his opinion of Donatello's 



statue, 321; a saying of his, com- 
mending moderation, 344. 

Annals of the Parish, why rejected, 
156. 

Anson, Lord, different opinions of, 
197. 

Appleseed, Johnny, character and 
career of, 125. 

Apuleius, a curious fact relating to, 
254. 

Arago, his claim for ancient Egypt, 
189. 

Archimedes, the tomb of, 221. 

Arctic morality, 113. 

Arctic region, small proportion of 
fuel used in the, 245; effect of 
frost in the, 300. 

Aristotle, his opinion of labor, 137; 
fate of, 224. 

Arnold, Matthew, moral rules for 
the sage only, 365. 

Artist, an, in serpents, 299. 

Aspasia, her relations with Pericles, 
55. 

Atterbury, Bishop, what he said of 
Newton, 119. 

Augereau at the coronation of Na- 
poleon, 123. 

Augustine, Saint, and the idea of 
Fourierism, 191 ; subtleties on the 
question. What then is time? 335; 
subtleties on a happy life, 336. 

Augustus, his opinion of labor, 137. 

Auld Lang Syne, 207. 

Aurelius, Marcus, tolerant and good 
to all but Christians, 49 ; his idea 
of free government, 193 ; his 
doubtful wife and bad son, 251; 
what he learnt from his tutor, 
343; a lofty thought of, on the 
sacredness of life, 350. 

Babinet, his opinion of an ocean 

telegraph, 265. 
Bacon, on nature reviving — .^sop'a 



INDEX. 



damsel, 60; his remark on the 
Turks, 109; and the plays of 
Shakespeare, 254; his distrust of 
scientific discovery, 254; on the 
happiness of the great, 332. 

Bailly, story told of, 175. 

Balzac, his care in composition, 141, 

Barbauld, Mrs., her stanza on Life, 
351. 

Barry, Michael J., some lines by, 
135. 

Bathurst, Lord, and the Essay on 
Man, 253. 

Baxter, a believer in witchcraft, 
255; his views at the end of life, 
266; the result, after a trial of 
worldly things, 322. 

Bayle, on Pericles and Aspasia, 55 ; 
on the spirit of party, 75 ; on Ma- 
chiavelli's Prince, 236; the puritj- 
of, 248. 

Becket, Thomas a, story of the 
mother of, 217. 

Beckford, and his romance, Vathek, 
256. 

Bentivoglio, misfortunes of, 259. 

Berkeley, Bishop, on being master 
of one's time, 146. 

Bernis, Cardinal, and Madame de 
Pompadour, 267. 

Betterton, a borrower from Steele, 
177. 

Beza, one of his invectives, 58; 
his coarse amorous poems, 266. 

Bible, The, in literature, 168; a 
reference to, 246. 

Blackwood's Magazine, on diversity 
of character, 20 ; on the inevitable 
and irremediable, 101 ; on public 
opinion, 358; on the adoring prin- 
ciple in human nature, 364. 

Bolingbroke to Swift, 219. 

Books never published, 199. 

Boots with pointed toes believed to 
be the cause of the plague, 206. 

Borghese, Paulo, poverty of, 258. 

Bossuet, acknowledges his insignifi- 
cance, 46. 

Boswell, and intellectual chemistry, 
56 ; on being reckoned wise, 176 ; 
the bulwark of Johnson's fame, 
197; Johnson's pretended con- 
tempt of, 246. 

Brahe, Tycho, and the idiot, Lep, 
230 ; his terror of a hare or fox, 
247. 

Bramah, origin of the idea of his 
lock, 189. 



Brewster, Sir^David, and the story 
of the falling apple, 182; on Gali- 
leo's abjuration, 224. 

Bronte, Charlotte, her life and gen- 
ius, 275. 

Brown, John, utterances and anec- 
dotes of, 127; and the old engine- 
house, 262 ; and the Governor of 
Virginia, 262; adaughter of, 262; 
one of his trusted men, 263. 

Brown, Tom, a remark by, 137. 

Browne, Sir Thomas, on self-love, 
28 ; acknowledgment of his igno- 
rance, 47 ; on a neglect of the great, 
157; on maxims that will never be 
out of date, 166 ; his faith in witch- 
craft, 226; a lofty tliought by, on 
the immortality of life, 350; on 
usurping the gates of heaven, 362 ; 
his distrust of his own judgment, 
378. 

Bruce, and the story of the spider, 
174; death of, 257. 

Brunei, a remark by, on Pompey's 
Pillar, 188. 

Brunelleschi, and the story of the 
egg, 174. 

Buffon, his manner of composing, 
142. 

Bulwer, his description of a superior 
man, 82 ; on the English language, 
165. 

Bunsen, d3nng exclamation of, 385. 

Bunyan, wrote Pilgrim's Progress in 
prison, 144. 

Burke, no great fire without great 
heat, 59 ; a remark of his on idle- 
ness, 137; his tribute to John 
Howard, 234; his great care as a 
writer, 253. 

Burnet, Bishop, his estimate of New- 
ton, 119; on Lord Rochester, 239. 

Burns, characterizes woman, 19; 
remarks of and by, 139; his pov- 
erty and pride, 147; advised to 
imitate Mrs. John Hunter, 154 ; 
tribute of Hawthorne to, 158 ; the 
Scotsman's religion, 180; a com- 
plaint of himself, 247 ; pronounced 
incapable of music, 260; on sen- 
sibility, 312; his constitutional 
melancholy, 313; lines by, 340. 

Burton, naught so sweet as melan- 
choly, naught so damned as mel- 
ancholy, 312. 

Byron, criticisms of, 154; his love 
of a bad reputation, 162; curious 
facts relating to, 162; criticises 



INDEX. 



389 



mvthologj', 195 ; a peculiarity of, 
247. 

C^SAR, Augustus, his fear of thun- 
der, 247. 

Cfesar, Julius, the corpse of, 223 ; 
ambition of, criticised by Pascal, 
349. 

Calamities sometimes blessings, 228. 

Caligula, his conduct towards his 
horse, 110. 

Caliph, memorial of an illustrious, 
329. 

Callcott, his picture of Milton and 
his daughters, 181. 

Calvin, occasional violence of, 58. 

Camoens, poverty of, 143, 258. 

Campbell, and Prof. Wilson, 266. 

Candide's supper at Venice with the 
six kings, 330. 

Canova exhibiting his paintings, 258. 

Canute, the story of, 173. 

Captain of Virginia militia, exclama- 
tion of, 134. 

Carlyle, legend of Moses and the 
Dead Sea people, 61; on the ef- 
fects of custom, 79 ; his opinion 
of a hero, 236 ; compares men to 
sheep, 294. 

Carrancha, the, that lives on scabs, 
etc., 68; hunts the gallinazo for 
its vomit, 69. 

Cashmere, shawls of, 187. 

Castelar, a republican's opinion of 
Rome, 306; on the unhappiness 
of life, 334, pleads for universal 
toleration, 357. 

Cato, how he was estimated by con- 
temporaries, 152; learned Greek 
after he was seventy, 265. 

Cecil, who sorrowed in the bright 
lustre of a court, 332. 

Cervantes, poverty of, 143 ; planned 
and commenced Don Quixote in 
prison, 144; a curious fact of, 198; 
his wretchedness and melancholy, 
312. 

Change, anecdotes and facts illus- 
trating, 24, 25, 26, 27. 

Chalmers, and the views of Malthus, 
261. 

Channing, on establishing a new 
society, 383. 

Chapman, Jonathan, knoAvn as 
Johnny Appleseed, 125. 

Charlemagne, a story told of the 
daughter of, 173. 

Charles I., a story told of, 174. 



Charles II., his criticism of Sir Mat- 
thew Hale, 19; touching for the 
evil, 225; and Cromwell, 302; and 
Wycherley, 302; the name given 
him by one who knew him, 303; 
manner of the death of, 303 ; char- 
acter of, drawn by Macaulav, 
305. 

Charles XII., of Sweden, anecdote 
of, 175. 

Charillus, King of Sparta, what was 
said of him when commended, 
59. 

Charity, Christian, a story illustrat- 
ing, ^353. 

Chaulnes, Duke de, and Dr. John- 
son, 366. 

Chaumette, devoted to an aviary, 
109. ^ 

Cheops, ring of, 185. 

Chesterfield, a remark on, 197; 
speeches of, written by Johnson, 
252. 

China, scarcity of labor in, 244. 

Chinaman's rebuke of Christians, 
113. 

Cicero, his experience at a watering- 
place, 31; his opinion of labor, 
137; the diminutive copy of the 
Iliad he saw, 185; on universal 
brotherhood, 193 ; his hunting the 
tomb of Archimedes, 220. 

Clairvo3'ance, very old, 190. 

Cobbe, Frances Power, on the Chris- 
tian movement, 367. 

Coleridge, one just flogging he re- 
ceived, 38; some devil and some 
God in man, 56; anecdote of a 
dignified man, 83 ; remark on 
doing good, 102 ; opinion of trad- 
ers in philanthropy, 107; project 
of pantisocracy, 114 ; fears he has 
caught the itch, 114; what he 
thought a sufficient income, 149; 
opinion of Goethe's fame, 155; 
superhuman powers of, 158 ; com- 
parison of Shakespeare and Mil- 
ton, 159 ; on Shakespeare and 
Homer, 159; remark on Young, 
159; on passion without appetite, 
163; and John Chester, 216; cu- 
rious facts relating to, 255; and 
The House that Jack Built, 267; 
on certain smells, 300; his simi- 
ming up of life, 333; remark on 
Home Tooke, 374 ; remark on 
toleration, 379. 
Columbus and the egg, 174. 



390 



INDEX. 



Commodus, tolerant to Christians, 
252. 

Common sense defined, 22. 

Communist, a, defined, 116. 

Confucius, describes the conduct of 
the superior man, 39; his joy in 
frugality, 145; and the Golden 
Rule, 193; anecdote of, 369. 

Congreve, what the one wise man 
knew, 47. 

Conscience, 39. 

Corey, Giles, pressed to death, 74. 

Corneiile, his povert}', 143 ; what 
Napoleon said of him, 160. 

Correggio, without a portrait, 260. 

Corwiu, Thomas, anecdote of, 176. 

Couthon, devoted to a spaniel, 109. 

Cowley, a timid lover, 248. 

Cowper, his mental malady, 229; 
the ballad of John Gilpin, 229; 
the poor school-master, Teedon, 
230; his attempt at suicide, 250; 
his giggling with Thurlow, 250; 
a melancholy confession of, 314. 

Credulity, 35, 226. 

Creed, in the biliary duct, 23; re- 
ferred to in the rebuke of a cler- 
gyman, 36. 

Crichton, curious achievement of, 
261. 

Cromwell and Charles II., 302; and 
Milton, 302 ; estimate of when 
flattery was mute, 303; manner of 
his death, 303. 

Crowne, John, reading by lightning, 
58. 

Cumberland, describes Soame Jen- 
yns, 240 ; Goldsmith and his 
comedy, 268; the dinner at the 
Shakespeare tavern, 268; predic- 
ament of an artist in serpents, 
299 ; a reflection on old age, 329 ; 
on a man gifted with worldly 
qualities, 345; remark on Bub'b 
Doddington, 374. 

Curing public evils, 41. 

Curiosity, 32, 47, 374. 

Curran, contest with the fish-woman, 
44; remark to Phillips about his 
speeches, 253 ; melancholy nature 
of, 312. 

Curtis, George William, castles in 
Spain, 323. 

Custom, doth make dotards of us all, 
79. 

Daguerre, his discovery antici- 
pated, 189. 



Damascus blades of the Crusades, 
188. 

D'Arblay, Madame, and Mrs. Bar- 
bauld's stanza on Life, 351. 

Darwin, cattle in East Falkland Isl- 
and, 26; earthquake at Talca- 
huano, 32 ; curious fox on the 
island of San Pedro, 34; conduct 
of the Fuegians, 43 ; petrified 
trees on the Andes, 120; conduct 
of the New Zealand chief, 216; 
the three years drought in Buenos 
Ayres, 223; sound and silence in 
the forest of Brazil, 300. 

De Foe, rules from The Complete 
English Tradesman, 95. 

De Lisle and the Marseillaise, 208, 
252. 

Delia Valle, conduct of the women 
at Goa, 50 ; his own curious con- 
duct, 50. 

Demetrius, and his father, 174; story 
told of, 175. 

Democritus, thought to be a mad- 
man, 152. 

Demosthenes, timidity of, 259. 

Den ham, curious facts relating to, 
237 ; anecdote of, 238. 

Desert, painful silence of the, 300. 

De Stael, Madame, criticism of God- 
win, 109 ; and Madame Kecamier, 
179; mourns the solitude of life, 
332. 

De Quincey, no thought without 
blemish, 101 ; his opinion of 
Goethe, 154. 

De Retz, statement of, 173. 

Devil, the Reformation and the, 
207: the priest and the, 207. 

Dickens, his care in composition, 
141. 

Digby, an illustration from, 27. 

Dignity, assumed, described and 
satirized, 81; 82, 83, 84, 85. 

Diminutive writing and printing, 
185. 

Diogenes, banished for counterfeit- 
ing, 257. 

Dionysius, story of, 173. 

Disraeli, Isaac, his sketch of Audley, 
87 ; anecdote of, 148 ; on proverbs, 
166 ; on men of genius, 235. 

Disraeli, Benjamin, on the limits of 
human reason, 76. 

Diversity, 19. 

Doddington, Bubb, characterized by 
Cumberland, 374. 

Doing good, difficulty of, 38 ; remark 



INDEX. 



391 



of Lamb on, 99 ; remark of Cole- 
ridge, 102; passages from Tho- 
reau, 103. 

Domitian, amused himself catching 
flies, 260. 

Drummond, the sonorous laugher, 
269. 

Dryden, criticises the judges of his 
day, 19. 

Dutch ambassador and the King of 
Siam, 112. 

Dyer, George, his experience while 
usher, 98; an associate of Lamb's, 
281 ; his biography of Robinson, 
281; his absent-mindedness, 282; 
anecdotes of, 283, 284. 

EcKERMANN, describes a scene on 
the Simplon, 345. 

Edwards, Jonathan, effect of his 
work on Original Sin, 70; curious 
fact relating to, 264. 

Egypt, hospitals for cats in, 110; 
ventilation in the pyramids of, 
189; the railroad dates back to, 
189 ; social questions discussed to 
rags in, 189. 

Eldon, Lord, and Bessy Surtees, 
250; his daughter's elopement, 
250 ; curious experience of, at Ox- 
ford, 250. . 

Elizabeth, Queen, a curious fact of, 
248. 

Elliott, Sir Gilbert, passion neces- 
sary to revolution, 59. 

Elliott, the Corn-Law Rhymer, de- 
fines a communist, 116. 

Eloquence, a rude specimen of, 311. 

Emerson, a man like a bit of Labra- 
dor spar, 18; the soul not twin- 
born, 20; life a series of surprises, 
40; acknowledgment of his ig- 
norance, 47 ; few spontaneous ac- 
tions, 79 ; remarks on reforming, 
100; is virtue piecemeal ? 102; of 
one that would help himself and 
others, 117; the martyrdom of 
John Brown, 134; advantages of 
riches not with the heir, 136 ; per- 
sonal independence, 148 ; the plant 
papyrus, 245; the difference be- 
tween the wise and the unwise,349 ; 
effects of an acceptance of the sen- 
timent of love, 355. 

Epictetus, on forgiving injuries, 193. 

Epicurus, his name a synonym for 
sensuality, 257. 

Erasmus, on self-love, 28 ; two nat- 



ures in Luther, 59; and Luther, 
308 ; what he said of Luther, 308. 

Essay on Man, curious statement 
relating to, 253. 

Esquirol, effects of occupation on 
the mind, 373. 

Euclid, stereoscope known to, 189. 

Evelyn, observation of on Jeffreys, 
196; his argument against soli- 
tude, 247. 

Evil, ceremony of touching for the, 
225. 

Extremes, law of, 294; meeting of 
in morals and legislation, 302. 

Fairy's funeral, description of a. 
292. 

Falstaft', dress to represent, 84. 

Farrar, legend of St. Brendan and 
Judas Iscariot, 384. 

Faustina, wife of Marcus Aurelius. 
251. 

Fenelon, on a violent zeal that we 
must coiTect, 359; anecdotes of, 
369. 

Fielding, curious fact relating to, 
198 ; and Richardson, 202. 

Fittleworth, rector of, how he lost 
his living, 51. 

Fitzherbert and Townshend, 215. 

Flaxman, determines the sex of a 
statue, 195; curious fact of the 
wife of, 228. 

Foote, laconic correspondence with 
his mother, 148; story of, 171; 
remark on the death of, 263, 

Foster, record of a reflective aged 
man, 22; analysis of an atheist, 
36; care in composition, 142; 
tribute to Howard, 232; origin of 
some of his essays, 249. 

Fournier, devoted to a squirrel, 109. 

Franklin, doubted his own judg- 
ment as he grew older, 377. 

Frederick the Great, story told of, 
175; and Robespierre, 241. 

Frederick William, canes a Jew in 
a street of Berlin, 64. 

Froude, terrible story related by, 71; 
human things and icebergs, 122; 
reflection of, applied to John 
Brown, 134; fortune and rank, 
136; the Scots a happ}' people, 
345; on putting to death for a 
speculative theological opinion, 
359; how the laity should treat 
the controversial divines, 364. 

Fuller, Margaret, remark of on Goe- 



392 



INDEX. 



the, 117; few great, few able to 
appreciate greatness, 151. 

Fuller, Thomas, curious fact of Ra- 
belais, 198 ; curious fact of Wol- 
sey, 226; the Holy Ghost came 
down not in tiie shape of a vulture, 
356 ; on being stoned by one with- 
out fault, 385. 

Fuseli, a habit of, in sketching, 17. 

Gainsborough, remark on paint- 
ing and engraving, 202. 

Galileo, ceremony of abjuration, 
224; his blindness, 231. 

Gait, an observation by, 122; An- 
nals of the Parish, 156. 

Gaskell, account of the death of a 
cock-fighting squire, 53; anecdote 
of Grimshaw, 69. 

Gems, imitations of, 184; cabinet of 
in Italy, 185. 

Geoffrin, Madame, and Kulhi^re, 
178. 

Gladstone, interesting reply of, 261. 

Glass, in Pompeii, 184. 

Godwin, Madame de Stael's criti- 
cism on, 109. 

Goethe, acknowledges his ignorance, 
45 ; reason can never be popular, 
76; anecdote of Merck and the 
grand duke, 98; to know how 
cherries and strawberries taste, 
100; a fortunate mistake, 102; 
nature, 115; giving advice, 116; 
aristocracy and democracy, 116; 
the world cannot keep quiet, 122; 
objections to luxurious furniture, 
146 ; advised against writing 
Faust, 156 ; influence of Voltaire, 
158 ; genius of Shakespeare, 159 ; 
self-importance, 160; first impres- 
sion of Switzerland, 200; critical 
remark, 201 ; a peculiarity of 
Schiller, 247; disparaged himself 
as a poet, 258; pleasant dreams 
after falling asleep in tears, 315 ; 
compares life to a residence at a 
bathing-place, 328; the simplicity 
of the world, 343 ; arrogance nat- 
ural to youth, 347; remark at 
the age of seventy-five, 351; truth 
and error, 357; a Christianity of 
feeling and action, 362. 

Goodness tainted, 104. 

Goldsmith, vanity of human judg- 
ment, 40; bowl-holders of Tar- 
tary, 85 ; ten years composing 
The Traveler, 142; to Bob Bryan- 



ton, 144; proud reply to Hawkins, 
149; criticises Walier, Pope, and 
Milton, 153; relations with Bott, 
the barrister, 203 ; friendship and 
jealousy, 244; as a talker and as 
a writer, 247 : Goody Two Shoes, 
267; at the British "Coffee House, 
268 ; first acting of She Stoops to 
Conquer, 269; conduct during, 
271. 

Gordianus, epitaph of, 260. 

Grammont, Count, on Sir John 
Denham, 237. 

Gray, criticises Thomson and Aken- 
side, 153 ; diffidence and fastidi- 
ousness of, 241. 

Greene, Peele, and Marlowe, 253. 

Grimaldi, devouring melancholy of, 
313. 

Guerin, Maurice de, on a solitary 
life, 338. 

Hale, Sir Matthew, criticised by 
Charles II., 19; trials before him 
for witchcraft, 226 ; influenced by 
Jeffreys, 251. 

Hall, Robert, sought relief in Dante, 
265. 

Hallam, his opinion of Hooker, 226. 

Hammond, Elton, 278. 

Handel, blindness of, 231. 

Harrington, imprisonment of, 144. 

Hart, a good preacher and a bad 
liver, 56. 

Harvey, effect of his discovery, 300. 

Hawthorne, on men who surrender 
themselves to an overruling power, 
108; on special reformers, 108; 
distinction between a philanthrop- 
ic man and a philanthropist, 127; 
Byron and Burns, 158 ; statement 
relating to the Mayflower, 245i 

Haydn, story of, 182. 

Hayward, passages from, 172, 181. 

Hazlitt, legend of a Brahman turned 
into a monkey, 61 ; Coleridge and 
John Chester, 216; the poet Gray, 
241 ; opinion of Mary Lamb, 266 ; 
wanting one thing, he wanted 
everything, 321; keeping in our 
own walk in life, 343 ; life, at the 
beginning and end, 347. 

Heine, pleads for the negro king, 
43; when he would forgive his 
enemies, 66; opinion of Goethe, 
158; the ignorance of doctors, 
212. 
I Helps,- Arthur, the nature of man- 



INDEX. 



393 



49 ; you never know enough about 
a man to condemn him, 53; the 
art of life, 337 ; dialogue on tolera- 
tioa and charity, 380. 

Helvetius, advice to Montesquieu, 
156. 

Henderson, his facility in getting 
words by heart, 140. 

Henrv, Patrick, his last speech, 
262. 

Hercules, diminutive figure of, 186. 

Herder, advice to Goethe, 156. 

Hildebraud, Pope, fate of, 224. 

Hill, Dr., and Hannah Glass, 267. 

History and fiction, 171. 

Hogarth, his estimate of Revnolds, 
202. 

Hogg, neighbors of, thought him no 
poet, 152. 

Holbein, German engraving in the 
manner of, 322. 

Hood, a victim of distress and mel- 
ancholy, 317; anecdotes of, 317, 
318; lines on his dead child, 318; 
passages from letters to little chil- 
dren, 318, 319. 

Hooker, circumstances of his mar- 
riage, 227; character of, bv Izaak 
Walton, 227. 

Home, Sweet Home, 208. 

Homer, called a plagiarist, 152; ef- 
fect of his character, 169. 

Horace, passage from, 300. 

Howard, humanity of, 232. 

Howp, his method of conducting 
public fasts, 51. 

Human things compared to icebergs, 
122. 

Humboldt, credits the Chinese with 
magnetic carriages, 189. 

Hume, his advice to Robertson, 
156. 

Hunt, Leigh, on pseudo-Christianitv, 
360; remark on Lamb, 379. 

Hvacinthe, on the church of the 
future, 362. 

Ice, curious facts relating to, 214. 
Iceland, the best building in, 245. 
Icicles, formation of, 214. 
Ideas, tlie few great remain about 

the same, 164. 
Ignorance, 32. 33, 34, 35, 43, 44, 45, 

46,47,244,349. ^ 

Indian cazique, story of, 112. 
Intellectual chemistry, 56. 
Invective, a primitive Quaker's, 57. 
Ireland, baptisms in, 52. 



Irving, on the habit of criticising 
government, 41; an observation 
on Goldsmith, 195; modesty and 
diffidence of, 242; called a vaga- 
bond by a neighbor, 242; stealing 
his own apples, 242; circumstances 
under which he completed The 
History of New York, 316. 

Isocrates, timidity of, 259. 

Jatmeson, Mrs., story related by, 
179. 

Java, flowers, fruits, and trees of, 
300. 

Jeffreys, portrait and conduct of, 
196; influence over Sir Matthew 
Hale, 251. 

Jenner, persecution of, 205. 

Jenyns, described by Cumberland, 
240. 

Jerome, St., legend of St. John, re- 
corded by, 355. 

Jerrold, ambitious to write a treatise 
on philosophy, 258; The Caudle 
Lectures, 313. 

Joan of Arc, Shakespeare's and 
Schiller's, 181. 

Johnson, Dr., his opinion of remarks 
of Orrery and Del any on Swift, 
18; contest with the fish-woman 
43; hatred of baby-talk, 63; re- 
mark on marriage, 76; opinion 
of feeling people, 109 ; opinion of 
levelers, 116; remarks by Cum- 
berland on, 150; how Cave once 
made him happy, 150; opinion of 
Milton's sonnets, 154; criticises 
Swift, Gray, and Sterne, 154; 
opinion of Lycidas, 155; a neg- 
lect of the great, 157; remark to 
Mrs. Macaulay, 176; version of 
Pope's Messiah, 183 ; reviewer's 
remark on, 197; painter's confes- 
sion to, 203 ; story of Demosthenes 
Taylor, 216; tribute to Savage, 
239 ; poverty and companionships 
of, 246 ; belief in ghosts, 246 ; 
superstitious peculiarity of, 247; 
a famous speech of Pitt, 252; 
speeches of Chesterfield, 252; his 
collected sermons, 252 ; No. 97 of 
The Rambler, 253 ; Ramblers writ- 
ten rapidly, 253; confidence in 
Psalmanazar, 255 ; learned Dutch 
after he was seventy, 265; first 
acting of Goldsmith's comedy, 
269; distressing melancholy of, 
314; Pope and his writings, 314; 



394 



INDEX. 



Young and Ins writings, 314; the 

Christian religion, 366. 
Jones, Paul, ant! Thomson's Seasons, 

258. 
Journalism, impersonal, 245. 
Judkins, Juke, Keminiscencesof, 90. 
Junius, warns the king, 296. 
Jupiter, imaginary proclamation by, 

371. 

Kane, Dr., curious experience with 
the Esquimaux, 113; of frost in 
the Arctic region, 300. 

Kempis, Thomas a, of simplicity and 
purity, 341 ; of charity and humil- 
ity, 370; of amending our own 
faults, 370. 

King, Dr., remark on toleration, 379. 

Kinglake, care in the composition of 
Eothen, 142. 

Knowledge, reserved, 244. 

Labor, life's chiefest blessing, 137. 

Lais, saying of the courtesan, 55. 

Lamarti'ne, sentimentalism of, 162. 

Lamb, remark on covetousness, 87; 
analysis of meanness, 90; anec- 

. dote of George Dyer, 98; doing 
good b}' stealth, 99; story of an 
India-house clerk, 110; care in 
composition, 141; criticises Faust, 
154; tribute to Manning, 157; 
essay on the Origin of Roast Pig, 
177; first acting of Mr. H., 272; 
hopeful letter to Manning, 272; 
hisses his own bantling, 274; an- 
other letter to Manning, not so 
hopeful, 274; poor Elia, 275; con- 
stitutional melancholy of, 313. 

Lamb, Mary, Hazlitt's opinion of, 
266. 

Landor, eyes of critics on one side, 
19; opinions of Shakespeare and 
Milton, 158, 159; Cromwell and 
Milton, 159; Swift, Addison, Ra- 
belais, La Fontaine, and Pascal, 
313; the falsehood of life, 360. 

Lansdowne, phrenologist's opinion 
of, 196. 

Lardner, curious facts of, 265. 

Last Rose of Summer, 208. 

Latimer, Tenterden - steeple and 
Goodwin Sands, 33. 

Lavater, judgment of Lord Anson, 
197. 

Layard, nature breaking out in a 
party of Arabs, 60; engravings 
on Nineveh, 186; lens found in 



Nineveh, 189; tradition of Njm- 
rod and the gnat, 301. 

Lecky, witchcraft in England, 70; 
opinion of Hooker, 226 ; great and 
multiform influences of Christian 
philanthropy, 368. 

Legends and Parables : a Brahman 
turned into a monkey, 61 ; Moses 
and the dwellers by the Dead Sea, 
61; the redbreast,"and how it was 
singed, 68; the Brahman and the 
three rogues, 295; Og, a King of 
Bashan, 296; Nimrod and the 
gnat, 301; Gabriel and the idol- 
worshiper, 341; St. John in the 
arms of his disciples, 355 ; blind 
men and the elephant, 375; St. 
Brendan and Judas Iscariot, 384; 
Abraham and the old man who 
worshiped the fire onlv, 385. 

Le Notre and Louis Xll/"., 174. 

Le Sagp, poverty of, 143. 

Lessing, the restless instinct for 
truth, 48. 

Levelers, remark of Johnson on, 116. 

Life, every j^ear of a wise man's, 23; 
a series of surprises, 40; knowl- 
edge of, 347; beginning and end 
of, 347; stanza on, 351. 

Lilli Burlero, ballad of, 207. 

Lincoln, his dislike of being preached 
to, 104; how he earned his first 
dollar, 138; idea the slaves had 
of him, 311; reason he gave for 
not uniting himself to any church, 
384. 

Linnaeus, curious facts relating to, 
238. 

Liston, a confinned hypochondriac, 
313. 

Livingstone, Dr., exclamation of 
Sekwebu at seeing the sea, 34; 
tribe of good Africans, 113. 

Livy, on curing' public evils, 41. 

Llandaff, Bishop of, anecdote of, 136. 

Lloyd, his remedy for madness, 266. 

Locke, anecdote of the King of 
Siam, 112. 

Longfellow, lines from Hiawatha, 
297. 

Lovelace and Suckling, 264. 

Lowell, definition of common sense, 
22; Montaigne and Shakespeare, 
27; witchcraft, 75; every man 
leads two lives, 79 ; Victor Hugo 
and Petrarch, 160, 161. 

Luther, a violent saint sometimes, 
57; what he said of himself, 59; 



INDEX. 



395 



the devil, 246; believed in witch- 
craft, 255; relations with Eras- 
mus, 307; opinion of Erasmus, 
308 ; with Melancthon in the pul- 
pit, 309. 

Mabillon, a genius by an accident, 

228. 
Macaulay, egotism of Byron, Pe- 
trarch, and Rousseau, 162; Ma- 
chiavelli, 236; Byron, 296; times 
of Cromwell and Charles II., 303, 
304,305; characterof Charles II., 
" 305 ; hanging of Aikenhead, 359. 

Machiavelli, a zealous republican, 
236; curious facts relating to, 
237. 

Mackenzie, Henry, his advice to 
Burns, 154. 

Mackenzie, Sir George, an advocate 
of solitude, 247. 

Mahagam, ruins of, 223. 

Mahomet, turns a calamity to his 
advantage, 80. 

Maintenon, Madame de, toherniece, 
333. 

Man, like a certain statue, 18 ; like 
a bit of Labrador spar, 18 ; a noble 
animal, 18; his own chiefest flat- 
terer, 28 ; most apt to believe what 
he least understands, 32; lives 
blindl.y, 40 ; tries to pass for more 
than he is, 43; a terrible Voltaic 
pile, 49 ; some devil and some God 
in him, 56; a curious object for 
microscopic study, 77; a natural 
reformer, 100 ; persuadability of, 
114; when he is powerful, 117; 
the fittest place where he can die, 
135; his self-importance, 160; 
when he becomes conscious of a 
higher self, 350; naturallv relig- 
ious, 364. 

Mandeville, an observation by, 342. 

Man-mending, mania of, 114. 

Marat, kept doves, 109. 

Marlborough, avarice of, 247; mean- 
ness of, 261. 

Marlowe, Peeie, and Greene, 253. 

Marseillaise, origin of the, 208. 

Mather, Cotton, the panic he created 
in New England, 73. 

Mathews, curious anecdote by, 211. 

Mayflower, a slave-ship, 245. 

Meanness, a study and an analysis 
of, ItO. 

Medhurst, Dr., Chinese opinions of 
Christians reported by, 113. 



Melancthon and Luther in the pulpit, 
309. 

Melmoth, on thinking authors, 165. 

Mencius, on the disease of men, 105. 

Merck and the grand duke, 98. 

Mesmerism, very old, 190. 

Meyer, a curious fact related by, 
301. 

Microscope, known to the ancients, 
186. 

Migne, Abb^, curious cruelties re- 
ferred to by, 110. 

Middleton, the three sects in Home, 
55; stories of Cicero, 31, 221. 

Mill, curious omission of, 264. 

Mills of God, 119. 

Milnes, a statement of to Hawthorne, 
245. 

Milton, and Paradise Lost, 264. 

Miser, characterized by Colton, 86; 
a saying of Foote, 87; effect of his 
hoarding habits illustrated, 87; 
an observation of Lamb, 87. 

Misfortunes never come singly, 297. 

Moliere, a hypochondriac, 249. 

Mone}'--getter analvzed, 88. 

Montagu, Basil, prejudice, the spider 
of the mind, 372. 

Montagu, Lady Mary "Wortley, of 
the Duchess of Marlborough, 49; 
obloquy incurred from introducing 
inoculation, 205. 

Montaigne, difference in opinions, 
20; action of seeing outward, 27; 
a pattern within ourselves, 39; the 
virtue of the soul, 39; curing 
public evils, 41 ; conduct of lectur- 
ers in the courts of philosophy, 
55; nature starting up, 60; faith 
in physicians, 212 ; the fairest 
lives, in his opinion, 342; the 
thoughts and actions of man, 372; 
distrusting our own judgments, 
378. 

Montespan, Madame de, to Madame 
de Maintenon, 49 ; rigorous devo- 
tion of, 267. 

Moore, seventy lines a week's work 
for, 142 ; story of the jeweled lad)--, 
172; trick of" Father Prout at the 
expense of, 183; statement relat- 
ing to Sheridan, 266. 

More, Hannah, her opinion of Mil- 
ton's sonnets, 154. 

More, Sir Thomas, a fierce persecu- 
tor, 249. 

Mosheim, a sentence from an old 
album, 342. 



396 



INDEX. 



Mother Goose's Melodies, 210. 
Motley, effects of the gout of Charles 

v., "23; Luther when angry, 59; 

Kadbod and Bishop Wolf ran, 111; 

the Netherlands, 119; long live 

the beggars ! 123 ; Erasmus and 

Luther, 307. 
Motley, Mr., Joe Miller, 218. 
MuUer, Max, when a man becomes 

conscious of a higher self, 350; 

Christianity, 366. 

Napoleon, what he said of Cor- 
neille, 160; a thing that puzzled 
him, 178 : his fondness for Ossian, 
258; a remark of his to Bourri- 
enne, 296. 

Nature, goes her own way, 115. 

Neander, and Plutarch's Pedagogue, 
263. 

Nero, sensitive to poetry and music, 
49. 

Netherlands, the, Motley's descrip- 
tion of, 119. 

Newton, Rev. John, to the woman 
in prison, 69. 

Newton, Sir Isaac, aknowledges his 
ignorance, 46 ; his character illus- 
trated, 117; the story of the fall- 
ing apple, 182; a poor accountant, 
260 ; as a poet, 262. 

Nicholls, a sensual clergyman, 56. 

Nimrod and the gnat, 301. 

Nollekens and the widow, 24. 

Norris, John, self-love, 28; our pas- 
sions, 59. 

Old Oaken Bucket, origin of, 252. 

Opinions, no two alike, 20 ; human, 
the history of, 22 ; bundles of con- 
tradictions, 23; of the same men 
at different times, 23. 

Orrery, Lord, story of Swift, 179. 

Oyster-eating, first act of, 177. 

Palgrave, anecdotes of Abd-el- 
Lateef, 379. 

Panis, devoted to pheasants, 109. 

Pantisocracv, Coleridge's Utopia, 
114. 

Paracelsus, persecution of, 205. 

Paradise and Paris, 307. 

Pascal, vanity, 28 ; maxims of con- 
duct, 166;" vanity of the world, 
244; Solomon and Job on human 
misery, 334; the present never 
the mark of our designs, 335; a 
great advantage of rank, 349: 



criticism on the ambition of 
Caesar, 349; the two extremities 
of knowledge, 349 ; maxims and 
first principles subject to revolu- 
tion, 357 ; the choice of a profes- 
sion, 373; curiosity little better 
than vanity, 374. 

Paul, St., effect of his preaching at 
Ephesus, 358. 

Paul, Jean, a fact relating to sheep, 
295 ; his comic romance, Nicholas 
Margraf, 315. 

Paul and Virginia, pronounced a 
failure, 156 ; origin of an English 
translation of, 252. 

Payne, and Home, Sweet Home, 
208. 

Peele, Greene, and Marlowe, 253. 

Pericles, his relations with Aspasia, 
55. 

Persian, passage from the, 356. 

Persius, chastity and modesty of, 
258. 

Peruvian bark, an invention of the 
devil, 205. 

Peter the Great, how he stood to his 
whim, 115 ; his terror of a bridge, 
247. 

Peterborough, his remark of F^ne- 
lon, 370. 

Petrarch, criticised by Lowell, 161; 
criticised by Macaulay, 162; his 
sonnets, 197 ; despised Dante, 202. 

Petrified trees on the Andes, 120. 

Pepys, the poor widow in Holland, 
321. 

Phidias, his reported service to Peri- 
cles, 56 ; his sitting statue of Jupi- 
ter, 258. 

Philanthropic man, a, and a philan- 
thropist, 127. 

Philanthropists, malicious, anecdotes 
of, 107. 

Philanthropy, traders in, wrong in 
head or heart, 107. 

Philip HL and Don Quixote, 312. 

Phillips, Wendell, on borrowing in 
literature, 169; on the lost arts, 
184; curious statements relating 
to, 240. 

Philosophy, molecular, 21. 

Pitt, authorship of a famous speech 
of, 252. 

Plague, the, curious superstition as 
to the cause of, 206. 

Plato, his opinion of shop-keeping, 
137 ; evidence of care in the com- 
position of his Republic, 141 ; ac- 



INDEX. 



397 



cused of envv, lying, etc., 152; 
timidit}^ of, 259. 

Plays of the stage and of literature, 
211. 

Pliny, opinion of the Christian re- 
ligion, 264: questions nature, 334; 
a custom of the Thracians, 335. 

Plutarch, self-love, 28; without a 
biography, 260; curious omission 
of, 263 ; learned Latin after he was 
seventy, 265; the universality of 
religion, 364. 

Poe, lines by, 326. 

Pompadour," Madame de, and Cardi- 
nal Bernis, 267; her life an im- 
probable romance, 333. 

Pompey, career and end of, 224. 

Pontifical army, soldiers of the, 
244. 

Pope, every year of a wise man's 
life, 23; opinion of Newton, 119; 
anecdote of, 176; Johnson's Latin 
version of his Messiah, 183; ti- 
midity of, 259. 

Poussin, reply of, 136 ; story of, 
182. 

Poverty, fine horror of, 87; and 
parts, 136; necessary to success, 
137 ; amusing evidence of, 140. 

Prayer, the, said to have been in 
use by the Jews for four thousand 
years, 194. 

Preaching, remarks of Thoreau on, 
103; Lincoln's horror of being 
preached to, 104 ; virtue takes no 
pupils, 105. 

Presbyterian Holdenough and Epis- 
copalian Rochecliffe, 363. 

Procter, of Lamb's tragedy, 271. 

Prout, Father, his joke upon Moore, 
182. 

Psalmanazar and Johnson, 255. 

Public opinion, 22, 358. 

Puritanism, in New England, 51. 

Pythagoras, a curious statement re- 
lating to, 254. 

Rabelais, a curious fact relating to, 

198. 
Racine and Louis XIV., 143. 
Radbod, at the baptismal font. 111; 

declines the Christian's heaven, 

111. 
Railroads and rain, 213. 
Raleigh, Sir Walter, 145. 
Randolph, John, his first public 

speech, 262. 
Raphael and Michel Angelo, 202. 



Rawlinson, the stone he brought 
from Nineveh, 186. 

R^camier, Madame, and Madame de 
Stael, 179; sits and muses on the 
shore of the ocean, 332. 

Reformers, stories of, 107. 

Religion, if charity were made the 
principle of it instead of faith, 
353; two religions, the religion of 
amity and the religion of enmity, 
361. 

Renous, and his caterpillars, 265. 

Reynolds, Sir Joshua, story related 
of, 180; his colors fading, 187; in- 
quiries in the A^atican for the works 
of Raphael, 201; critical remark 
of, 201; and Hogarth, 202; his 
portrait of Bott alongside of Gold- 
smith, 204. 

Richard Coeur de Lion and Saladin, 
188. 

Richardson, man's resemblance to a 
statue made to stand against a 
wall, 18. 

Right, too rigid, hardens into wrong, 
107. 

Robertson, F. W., from his sermon 
on the tongue, 362. 

Robertson, advised against writing 
his history of Charles V., 156. 

Robespierre, and Frederick, 241; 
Madame Roland to, 296. 

Robinson, Crabb, his partiality for 
the Book of Revelation, 36; how 
he reconciled himself to his igno- 
rance, 45; rebuke of spiritual 
pride, 65; the Mahometan's heaven 
and the Christian's hell, 68; his 
opinion of Edwards' Original Sin, 
70 ; his impression of Sydney 
Smith, 157 ; instance of a dog 
barking at the echo of his own 
voice, 163; Jeffreys' portrait, 196. 

Robinson, Robert, remark relating 
to the trinity, 36 ; biographied by 
Dyer, 282. ' 

Rochefoucauld, his maxims criti- 
cised by Sterling, 17; reference 
to his maxims, 27; care in com- 
position, 142. 

Rochester, Lord, the last vear of his 
life, 239. 

Rodgers, the dying Scotsman's trib- 
ute to Burns, 180. 

Rogers, his care in composition, 143; 
his proposition to Wordsworth, 
147; remark on Sydney Smith, 
1 157. 



398 



INDEX. 



Roland, Madame, to Robespierre, 

296. 
Rollo, Duke of Normandy, story of, 

173. 
Roman emperor, a, curious use of 

the marble head of, 301. 
Romanianus, with only a name, 260. 
Rome, a bitter republican's opinion 

of, 306. 
Rosch, on effects of occupation on 

the mind, 373. 
Rousseau, a saying of, 115; and Vol- 
taire, 202; cause of his cynicism, 

249; a painstaking writer, 253; 

his preaching and his practice, 

267. 
Rulhiere and Madame Geoffrin, 178 ; 

guilty of only one wickedness, 372. 
Ruskin to his students, 187. 
Russell, Lord John, his definition of 

a proverb, 166. 
Rutherford, Samuel, and Archbishop 

Usher, 353. 

Saadi, the traveler and the bag of 
pearls, 137 ; description of a cob- 
bler, 192 ; verse of the elephant- 
driver, 369 ; reply of the piece of 
scented cla}', 370; Abraham and 
the old man who worshiped the 
fire only, 385. 

Sachs, Berthold, of earth and 
heaven, 321. 

Saladin and Richard Cceur de Lion, 
188. 

Saxe, his terror of a cat, 247. 

Saurin, his advice to Montesquieu, 
156. 

Savage, corrects a lady's judgment 
of Thomson, 195; tribute of John- 
son to, 239; with Johnson all 
night in London streets, 246. 

Scaramouche, snuff of a thousand 
flowers, 298. 

Scargill, on the Englishman, Scotch- 
man, and Irishman, 300. 

Schiller, Indian Death Song, 155; 
Joan of Arc, Don Carlos, and 
Tell, 181; the scent of rotten 
apples a necessity to, 247 ; curious 
fact relating to, 256. 

Scott, Walter, story of a placid 
minister, near Dundee, 63; how 
estimated by his countrymen, 
152; failure of Waverley pre- 
dicted, 156; meeting of liichard 
and Saladin, 188 ; the authorship 
of Old Mortality, 204; remark- 



able industry of, 265 ; a sad bit of 
self-portraiture, 315; a curious 
fact relating to the Bride of Lam- 
mermoor, 315. 

Scott, General, a sculptor's anec- 
dote of, 180. 

Seeing, limits to, 17 ; action of see- 
ing outward, 27. 

Seelev, on the difficulty of finding 
truth, 356. 

Selden, a remark on maiTiage, 244. 

Selw3'n, his reply on being charged 
with a want of feeling, 65 ; vices 
becoming necessities, 80. 

Seneca, an usurer of seven millions, 
248. 

Shaftesbury, on the love of wonder- 
ing and raising wonder, 373. 

Shark-god of the Sandwich Island- 
ers, 62. 

Sharpe, on the difficulty of doing 
good, 38. 

Shelley, sighs to Leigh Hunt, 353. 

Shenstone, splendid misery of, 249. 

Sheridan, how he elaborated his wit, 
142; a curious fact of, 266. 

Sherlock, consolation for the short- 
ness of life, 329. 

Siddons, acknowledgment of her 
ignorance, 45. 

Sidney, Algernon, remark of Eve- 
lyn relating to, 196. 

Simonides, his reply to Hiero, 47. 

Slaverv, effects of in Greece and 
Rom'e, 136. 

Small-pox, goddess of, worshiped 
and burned in China, 50. 

Smith, Sydney, objection to Scotch 
philosophers, 102; advice to the 
Bishop of New Zealand, 110; the 
Suckling Act, 115; remark to his 
brother, 177 ; a phrenologist pro- 
nounces him' a great naturalist, 
196; authorship of the Plymley 
Letters, 204; resorted to Dante 
for solace, 265 ; on getting human 
beings together who ought to be 
together, 337. 

Smollett, and his dependents, 203; 
private character of, 248. 

Socrates, on the hardest of all 
trades, 41; called illiterate, 152; 
remark of to his judges, 181; 
idolatry of, 246; timidity of, 259; 
a poor, accountant, 260; learned 
music after he was seventy, 265 ; 
enlargement of a thought of, 370. 

Solomon, there is no new thing, 194; 



INDEX. 



399 



wicked son of, 251 ; what he said 
of laughter, 312. 

Somerset, Duke of, anecdote of, 83. 

Sophocles, considered a lunatic, 152. 

Southey, stor}^ of Vergara and the 
seventh commandment, 32; un- 
known to his neighbors, 152; on 
certain famous literary works, 
203; attempt of to hoax Hook, 
204. 

Souvestre, virtue takes no pupils, 
105; philosophizes on the carni- 
val, 297; the little dwelling joy 
can live in, 343; awards the palm 
to moderation, 344; rest in an 
eternal childhood, 34i8. 

Spencer, the religion of amity and 
the religion of enmity, 361. 

Spenser, poverty of, 143; story of, 
and Southampton, 174. 

Spiritualism, modern, very old, 190. 

Stanley, storj'- of Rutherford and 
Archbishop Usher, 353. 

Statue, doubtful sex of a, 195. 

St. Bartholomew, conduct of the 
ladies at the massacre of, 50. 

Steele, one of his Tatlers referred 
to, 179; Miss Prue, 249; castle- 
builders, 327. 

Sterling, criticises Rochefoucauld's 
maxims, 17; on seeking perfect 
virtue, 100; there will always be 
errors to mourn over, 101. 

Sterne, conscience not a law, 39; 
the sermon in Tristram Shandy, 

St. Pierre, and Paul and Virginia, 
156. 

Stewart, Dugald, remark of on Ba- 
con's Essays, 46. 

Suckling and Lovelace, 264. 

Suetonius, alludes to Caligula's 
horse, 110 ; how he regarded 
Christians, 264. 

Sully, storv of, and the veiled ladv, 
174. 

Surrey, Earl of, lines by, 322. 

Swift^ on men's opinions, 23; letter 
of Bolingbroke to, 219 ; some 
thoughts of, 219; anticipates his 
death, 219 ; to Bolingbroke, 249 ; 
irony or seriousness of, 310 ; never 
known to smile, 313; just religion 
enough to make us hate, 360. 

Sydenham, poverty of, 144. 

Syrus, Publius, savings of, 60, 165, 
228. 



Tacitus, his opinion of the Chris- 
tian religion, 264. 

Taine, defines a character, 54 ; Puri- 
tanism, 306. 

Talfourd, and Lamb's farce of INIr. 
H., 273; anecdotes of Dyer, 282. 

Talleyrand, trembled when tlie word 
death was pronounced, 247; his 
reply to Rulhiere, 372. 

Tamerlane and the spider, 174. 

Tasso, poverty of, 143 ; cause of his 
insanity, 251. 

Taylor, Demosthenes, Johnson's 
story of, 216. 

Taylor, Jeremy, arguments for hu- 
mility, 29 ; earthen vessels better 
than golden chalices, 342; our 
trouble from within, 344; the re- 
ligion of Christ, 368 ; those that 
need pity, and those that refuse 
to pity, 373 ; of Abraham and the 
old man who worshiped the fire 
onlv, 385. 

Tell, William, relating to, 181. 

Temple, Sir William, compares life 
to wine, 329. 

Tennyson, his care in composition, 

TertuUian, his mode of dissuading 
Christians from frequenting public 
spectacles, 66 ; ideas of justice and 
mercy in his day, 68. 

ThackeVay, the world can prv us 
out, but don't care, 30; credulity 
of the sexes, 35 ; our paltry little 
rods to measure heaven immeas- 
urable, 66; a reflection on mar- 
riage, 76; a reflection of, applied 
to Madame de Pompadour, 333; 
toil, the condition of life, 334. 

Themistocles, Thuc\-dides' opinion 
of, 374. 

Theophrastus, timidity of, 259. 

Thompson, George, what he saw in 
Calcutta, 188. 

Thomson, a lady's opinion of from 
his writings. 195; luxurious in- 
dolence of, 251. 

Thoreau, doing good, 103; goodness 
tainted, 104 ; hacking at the 
branches of the tree of evil, 105; 
personal independence, 146. 

Threshing-machines, first effect of, 
206. 

Thucydides, ignorance bold, and 
knowledge reserved, 244; a re- 
mark on Themistocles, 374. 

Thurlow, and his daughter, 250. 



400 



INDEX. 



Tiberius, life of, with two title-pages, 
18. 

Tillotson, two wonders in heaven, 
379. , . ^ 

Titian, colors of, compared with 
Reynolds', 187- 

Tomochichi, would be taught before 
he was baptized, 112; what he 
thought of the colonists, 112. 

Tooke, Home, hoAv to be powerful, 
81 ; Beckford's speech, 256 ; a re- 
mark on, by Coleridge, 374. 

Townshend, Charles, and Fitzher- 
bert, 215. 

Trench, the fraud played off on Vol- 
taire, J83 ; a statement by, relating 
to Plutarch, 263. 

Truth, the difficulty of finding it, 
356 ; it must be repeated over and 
over again, 357 ; the infinite num- 
ber who persecute it, 358. 

Tyndall, the formation of icicles, 
214. 

Tyrian purple, 186. 

Tytler, a remark by on Raleigh's 
History, 145. 

Value of an epithet, 123. 

Vanity of human judgment, 40; of 
the world, 244. 

Vere, Sir Horace, what caused his 
death, 137. 

Vespasian, a story told of, 175. 

Vicar of Wakefield and the peasant, 
310. 

Virgil, what Pliny and Seneca 
thought of, 152. 

Virtue, of the soul, 39; takes no 
pupils, 105. 

Voltaire, the history of human 
opinions, 22; upon what the fate 
of a nation has often depended, 
23; anecdote of, 24; compares 
us to a river, 27 ; we on this globe 
like insects in a garden, 34; ac- 
knowledgment of his ignorance, 
46 ; the storv of NeAvton and the 
apple, 182 ; the forged Veda, 183 ; 
invention of scissors, shirts, and 
socks, 206; Candide's supper at 
Venice with the six kings, 330. 

Vondel, poverty of, 143. 

Wallenstein, faculties of, im- 
proved by a fall, 228. 

Waller, his opinion of Paradise 
Lost, 155; lines by, 351. 

Walpole, Horace, compares man to 



a butterfly, 34: man a ridiculous 
animal, 36 ; opinion of the Divina 
Commedia, 153 ; contempt of 
Johnson and Goldsmith, 153; 
criticises Sterne, Sheridan, Spen- 
ser, Chaucer, Dante, Montaigne 
Boswell, and Johnson, 154, 155 
opinion of Lord Anson, 197. 

Walton, Izaak,quaint passages from, 
relating to Hooker, 227 ; his reply 
to the discontented man, 340. 

Washington, a story related by, 
170; his remarkable gravity, 250. 

Webster, Daniel, the best talker he 
ever heard, 250. 

Weighing souls in a literal balance, 
68. 

Wesley, John, on witchcraft, 72; 
and Tomochichi, 112; his belief 
in ghosts, 246 ; his quiescent tur- 
bulence, 258; his story of a pa- 
rishioner who lived on boiled 
parsnips, 378. 

White, Gilbert, effect of certain food 
on a bullfinch, 25; differences in 
flocks of sheep, 26; a propensity 
of cats, 215; peculiarities of the 
tortoise, 215. 

Whipple, on dignit}', 81. 

Wilberforce and Wendell Phillips, 
240. 

Wilson, Prof., to the Ettrick Shep- 
herd, 25; thought to be a mad- 
man in Glasgow, 153; tete-a-tete 
with the poet Campbell, 266; con- 
test for the professorship, 285; 
first lecture in the university, 286 ; 
achievements in running, leaping, 
etc., 287; encounter with a pugil- 
ist, 287; pedestrian feats, 288, 
289 ; scene in an Edinburgh street, 
290; interferes at a prize-fight, 
291; describes a fairy's funeral, 
292 ; his relations with Dr. Blair, 
309. 

Witchcraft, Sir Matthew Hale's be- 
lief in, 71; Sir Thomas Browne's 
opinion of, 71 ; terrible punish- 
ment of, 71; John Wesley's belief 
in, 73 ; Richard Baxter a believer 
in, 73; a passage from Lowell on, 
75. 

Wither, wrote his Shepherd's Hunt- 
ing in prison, 145. 

Wolsey, credulity of, 226. 

Woman, characterized by Burns, 19. 

Woodworth and his famous song, 
252. 



INDEX. 



401 



Wordsworlh, his care in composi- 
tion, 142; reply to Rogers, 147; 
thought to be a fool hv his peas- 
ant neighbors, 152; tobin's ad- 
vice to, 156 ; his man-servant, 
James, 346 ; verses by, 348 ; what 
he said of Mrs. Barbauld's stanza 
on Life, 351. 

World, the, 35; on reformini^- it, 
100; it cannot keep quiet, 122, 

Wycherley, on reproving faults, 



Xexophon, disparaged labor, 137. 
Ximenes, Cardinal, a story told of, 
175. 

YouATT, differences in flocks of 
sheep, 26. 

Young, the prototvpe of Parson 
Adams, 282. 

Young, an incident of Swift bj', 
219 ; gayety of, 249. 

Young, Dean, a passage from one 
of his sermons, 363 ; another pas- 
sage, 368. 



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